Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED

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There is some eyeblow: zooming the 14-24mm puffs a little air out the D3's eyepiece. I suspect the D3 I used may have been missing an eyepiece cover. At or near the shortest focal length, one thing you do need to be wary of is that direct sunlight can strike the front element unless you’re shooting with the sun pretty much behind you. This can create ghosting and flare and, for this aspect of performance, the Sigma is more average than outstanding, compared with similar ultra-wide zooms like the competing Nikon 14-24mm. Verdict I give Nikon very high marks for this. Few photographers would have been surprised if this lens had weighed at least a couple hundred grams / half a pound more. Yet somehow Nikon found a way to make it the lightest lens in its class by a substantial amount. There is a reason why this is classed as one of Nikon's holy trinity of zoom lenses, it's sharpness is just fabulous I've not pushed its maximum aperture yet, but I'm pretty sure it will deliver given the results that I have seen so far. This lens replaced my lovely Sigma 17-35mm f2.8 and for me the extra couple of mm at its widest is a real bonus, the slight downside is the fact that it only goes to 24mm, but teamed with the Nikor 24-70mm f2.8 it makes a perfect travel kit particularly for architectural wor k. Nikon makes some seriously good ultra-wide lenses. The F-mount 14-24mm f/2.8 is often considered one of the best wide zooms ever, and the wide-angle Z lenses we’ve seen so far have also been fantastic. But how does the Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S compare?

This is a lens for which we need to see complete full-frame lens test results to see the full story. On a sub-frame D200, the poorest result we could obtain was at 24mm and ƒ/22, a torture test for most lenses. With the 14-24mm, the sharpness test graph shows a performance of approximately 2.5 blur units across the frame. That's the worst we could get. Optimal performance was obtained at wide-angle (14mm) set to ƒ/5.6, where the image is just about as sharp as our test can measure at 1 blur unit. Nice to see that the engineers have optimized this lens to be sharpest at the point where people will probably use it most, at 14mm. The Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 has a reasonably complex design with 16 lens elements in 11 groups, of which three are aspherical and four use extra-low dispersion glass. It has Nikon’s high-end construction for a Z-series lens, with two control rings, a custom function button, and an EL display for things like distance and depth of field information. NIKON Z 7 II + NIKKOR Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S @ 18mm, ISO 64, 1/125, f/8.0 The short answer is that it’s one of the best lenses we’ve ever tested. Nikon has managed class-leading performance in almost every measure, while also bringing the lens’s weight down to a remarkable 650 grams (1.43 pounds). By comparison, the F-mount version weighs 1000 grams (2.20 pounds), which is more than 1.5 times as heavy. The Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 SThe 14-24mm is as sharp at 14mm wide open at at f/2.8 in the far corners of my D300 as my normal lenses are in the center stopped down! The 14-24mm has no lateral color at any setting anywhere in the field of the D300. It has perfect sharpness and contrast even at f/2.8! This is crazy. Of course these MTFs are dreams, which mean they are calculated, not measured from real lenses. Nothing is said if the published graphs are monochromatic, polychromatic, or integrated over white light, so they mean very little for comparison to real samples of lenses. Don't lose sleep over any of this. My 14mm fixed lens is much smaller and lighter, but not as sharp at larger apertures and has more peripheral color shift. The ability to add front filters – while this could be useful for some users, from an astro perspective there’s not much use for this. Especially when considering the rear mount system discussed above, I did not find myself using (nor planning to use) this feature. What I Actually Don’t Care For This is the first Nikon ultrawide on which Nikon has removed the aperture ring to save money. These G lenses are useless with manual focus cameras.

Does this come with a durability penalty? Not particularly. While it’s true that the Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S has a mostly plastic exterior, it’s high-quality plastic, and the lens mount is still metal. NIKON Z 7 II + NIKKOR Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S @ 20mm, ISO 64, 1/160, f/8.0The one thing I’m not a huge fan of is the front glass element. It’s not flat like the rest of the Nikon line, but rather a bulbous protrusion that extends outward toward the front of the built-in lens hood. Nikon's users manual rightly cautions not to grab the lens by the cap, because it will slip off and drop your 14-24mm (and camera) to the ground if the lens slips out of the cap. Always grab it by the barrel. And in my extensive testing, the plane of focus is quite flat, and the off-center and even extreme corner sharpness is quite impressive. A lens' ghost, flare and contrast performance depend on many, many many factors. It depends more on the wisdom of the lens designer than a coating on one surface of one element. The other zillion surfaces have Nikon's traditionally excellent Super Integrated Multicoating (SIC). The Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 handles similarly to the other top-of-the-line Z-series lenses like the 24-70mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f/2.8, and 105mm f/2.8 macro. It has two control rings (at least one of which you should reserve for manual focus), a custom function button, and an EL display for information like distance and depth of field. The “DISP” button is to change which information appears on the EL display.

Most people use ultrawides too sheepishly, and get crummy results with a tiny subject dwarfed in the middle of a blank frame. When I use my 14mm I have to force myself to get closer and to pay rapt attention to the sides of my viewfinder, which too often are blank. As for the rest of the build quality features, the Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S has excellent weather and dust sealing, including a rubber seal along the lens mount. Nikon has been publishing x-ray style illustrations of the weather sealing for their recent Z lenses, including for the 14-24mm f/2.8 S: Image by Nikon My 14-24mm f/2.8 AFS is optically perfect on my D300. I'm not saying "perfect" like I call my wife perfect; I'm saying the 14-24mm is so optically perfect its as if Nikon suddenly exempted itself from the laws of optics which have fettered us for the past 150 years.Obviously, 14mm is a highly specialized focal length. So in which situations might a wedding photographer decide to shoot ultra wide? As usual I’ll have a look at the technical data first. I’ve rated the features with a [+] (or [++]), when it’s better than average or even state of the art, a [0] if it’s standard or just average, and [-] if there’s a disadvantage. I’ll compare it with the Sigma Art AF 24mm 1.4 DG HSM (the “Sigma 24/1.4” for short).