New Lens
May 11th, 2022
I told you about my new camera, a Nikon Z7ii. I’ve had it a while, but I didn’t have a Z-mount lens because the one I wanted was on back order…for months. Well, the lens arrived yesterday. It’s a Nikkor Z 24-120 f/4. I’m not planning to buy a bunch of lenses for this camera and that one seemed to offer just what I need. That focal range will cover 90-95 percent of the photos I take.
But, just how good is this lens? Is it up to the high resolution sensor in the camera. Some of my friends have suggested that it is too long a focal range for the high quality I’m looking for to be there. So, today with the help of a wonderful model who just recently contacted me about us working together, I was able to make my first test of the lens. Thanks to Erin Hinkle for being especially beautiful in front of the camera and for being patient while I went through a series of test settings.
I found some interesting things…some of which will require more testing to fully understand. First, as you can see from the first photo above, the lens is excellent. Very sharp. Almost too sharp for portraits. But that means it’s perfect for the documentary project I bought it for.
But, here’s something of interest. Below is a shot at f/5.6.
And here is an extreme crop of that photo so you can see just how sharp and detailed files from this lens and camera are:
And here’s where it gets a little interesting. Below is a photo shot in the same place at f/22:
Let’s see how that one looks in an extreme crop:
I hope in these jpegs you can see how much less sharp the f/22 frame is. Of course I know about diffraction at small apertures, but this is the most extreme example of it that I’ve seen in my own photos. More testing is going to be required to fully understand what’s going on, but it’s looking like I’ll need to be careful to always shoot at f/11 or wider if I want to maintain optimal sharpness.
Another thing I wondered about was flare. Back in days of olde flare was one of the reasons we didn’t use zoom lenses for many years. That’s mostly fixed in modern lenses, but I wondered how this specific lens would perform in that aspect. Well, take a look at the photo below:
I’d say, based on this test, that flare is pretty much non-existent with this lens.
So, I’m very happy with my new camera and lens. Ready to put them to use on some new projects. I’m also very happy with my new model, Erin. I hope I’ll be shooting a lot more with her in the near future.
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