Nikon Z 24-70 F2.8 S Lens Review including sample images.
My in-depth Nikon Z 24-70mm F2.8 Review and is it really that good?
Hello and welcome to my Nikon Z 24-70 F2.8 S review where I talk you through my impressions of this lens after using it now for over two years. In this review, we deep dive into its sharpness, contrast, vignetting, distortion, focus breathing, focus speed, balance, features and Bokeh too of course. As well as my conclusion and final thoughts on it.
Most professional photographers will tell you the 24-70 F2.8 lens is a must-have lens for their camera bag, as it’s so incredibly versatile and it covers a very important focal range. I would personally be lost without this lens as it has always been my photography workhorse. Paired with the stellar 70-200mm F2.8 lens on a second camera body you have a huge focal range covered with two amazing lenses.
Yes, I know I am late to the party with this 24-70 F2.8 review but over the last few months the sheer volume of people asking me about this lens and also what Z series lens should they buy that I thought it was about time I popped up a review of it.
So here it is and I cover everything you need to know from a photography and videography viewpoint in this review and video (below).
Table of Contents.
You can check out my full Nikon Z 24-70mm F2.8 review video below or read on if you prefer.
Initial impressions of this lens.
When you open this lens out of its box for the very first time it seems very similar to any other professional Nikon lens you may have had over the years, now you might think that’s a negative for this lens but in reality, as we live in a plastic age now I am always worried about build quality and more importantly the feel of a lens when I hold it for the first time and this lens did not disappoint at all.
It’s a solid well constructed lens and the optics scream quality as soon as you look at them and this only gets better when you mount the lens on the camera.
Spoiler alert… as you may have already guessed I love this lens for several different reasons but there are also a few little quirks you should know about it before you buy one and don’t worry I explain them in detail in the sharpness section below.
Let’s have a look at a few of the technical specs of the lens first like its size weight and feature list and we can get into the sharpness and focus speed and focus breathing in detail then.
Nikon Z 24-70 F2.8 S Size
As you can see in the image above (please forgive my grubby F mount lens) the Z mount is significantly smaller than the previous F mount 24-70 F2.8 lens so it’s going to be a lot easier to fit into your camera bag and travel around with for the day. Now one of the things you have to remember here is the Z mount version doesn’t need the FTZ adaptor to work on a Z series camera so this is where a lot of the space savings will be.
Like the older F mount version the new Z mount 24-70 F2.8 is a bellows design so the lens lengthens as you select a longer focal length. Curiously the F mount version got longer at the 24mm end of the focal length.
In the hand, it feels very similar to the older F mount but there is a different balance to this lens which is something I explain in a bit more detail below.
Nikon Z 24-70 F2.8 S Weight.
The Z mount 24-70 F2.8 is significantly lighter than the older F mount again for two reasons, firstly, you don’t need to use the FTZ adaptor with it and secondly, the lens itself is also physically lighter, I have their exact weights below…
Nikon Z mount 24-70 F2.8 weighs 805 grams.
Nikon F mount 24-70 F2.8 weighs 900 grams.
Nikon F mount 24-70 F2.8 and the FTZ adaptor weighs 1035 grams.
So if you are using the Z mount lens on a camera there is a nice weight saving of 230 grams. This will make a nice difference to your camera bag if you are carrying it around for the day or if you are like me and you hand-hold your camera on shoots for 4 to 7 hours a day you will appreciate this weight saving.
Feature list.
The 24-70 F2.8 z mount lens has a few nice features that you can see straight away on the camera body. The first is the OLED display which can display the focal distance (also shows a depth of field indicator), focal length or Aperture at the press of a button.
Simply press the Display button here to cycle through the modes. This OLED display is very handy when shooting in low-light situations and personally, I really appreciate it now.
The second nice feature is the control ring. The ring closest to the front lens element is the focus ring then you have the zoom ring and the last ring is the control ring.
This ring is set to control your aperture as default but you can set it to change several other settings like for example for video shooters you can set it to control your ISO, which could be very handy.
You also have a lens Fn button, which you can program to control a specific setting on your camera. As default on my Z8 it switches on starlight mode and personally, I really like that setup.
Feel, balance and build quality.
The 24-70mm feels balanced and very comfortable on any camera body I have used it on and when I directly compare it with my old F mount 24-70 F2.8 lens on any of my Z series cameras the Z mount version feels a good bit more balanced on the camera.
The weight seems to be closer to the camera body and of course, you don’t have to use the FTZ adaptor also so that doesn’t stretch the weight further out from the body.
As I am often hand-holding a lens on shoots for 6 to 8 hours a day, the feel and balance of a lens are very important to me and it always feels like the camera and lens are a single unit which is exactly what you want.
The build quality is exactly what you would expect from Nikon and it truly is top-notch, you immediately feel like you are holding and using a premium product.
The zoom and focus rings are nice and smooth, the extra control ring is a joy to use and the buttons are responsive and positive, so all in all it looks and feels like a premium product.
Ok, so we know it’s built well and it’s compact but how does it render backgrounds and more importantly how sharp is it? Well, let’s look at bokeh first and then deep dive into sharpness.
Bokeh on the Nikon 24-70mm F2.8
Above we have a photo of Dobbie the elf holding a Nikon ENEL15c battery like the good elf that he is, this shot was taken at 70mm at F2.8 and the next shot below was also taken at 70mm F2.8 but just slightly closer to reduce the focusing distance and help us blur out that background a little bit more.
As you can see the 24-70 F2.8 s lens produces some very nice Bokeh and background blur, more importantly, I have found there is also a very nice transition between the sharp and in-focus foreground and the out-of-focus background which is incredibly pleasing considering this is a zoom lens, now is it as good as a prime lens? Clearly not, but it really does an incredible job for a zoom, in fact, so much so, that I find myself not reaching for my primes as frequently now.
This is another huge positive for this lens and again yet another reason why you will always find it in my camera bag. But let’s look at sharpness next and find out if it can really produce the detail needed or should I say demanded in modern photography.
Nikon Z 24-70mm F2.8 Sharpness.
So let’s take a good look at sharpness now and before I tell you how super sharp it is I should explain that this lens does peak at specific focal lengths and drop off slightly on others. Now this is not an issue at all even when it’s not super sharp it is still better than my f mount 24-70 F2.8.
I run you through Sharpness in a lot more detail in my video review further up the page where I show you test chart results on a lot more focal lengths and apertures, I will show you the important ones here though and talk you through them.
In the photograph below you can see the center sharpness at 24mm and from my experience you need to stop down to F4 or slightly better F5.6 (not much of a difference between F4 and F 5.6 though) to get sharper results in the center of the screen.
I have personally found that when you get closer to 30mm this lens starts to get really sharp and the results you get from this zoom lens are staggeringly good. So the next image below is at 35mm and as you can see that really is very sharp once you stop the lens down to F4 or F5.6. The results at 50mm and 70mm gave similar results, again you can see more results in the video further up the page.
Overall the Nikon Z 24-70 F2.8 for a zoom lens is staggeringly good, its center sharpness is great even at F2.8 it’s very good.
Corner Sharpness
Corner sharpness across all focal lengths starts to get really good around F5.8 like in the 35mm sample shots below you can see them side by side. At F2.8 the corners are as you would expect soft the same as most lenses when they are shot wide open. At F4 corner sharpness starts to improve and it gets that slight bit better F5.6.
Please remember all these images are zoomed in at 200% so this is serious pixel peeping now.
The corner sharpness at 24mm isn’t quite as good as 35mm and I also found similar results to the 24mm test results once you went above 65mm with corner sharpness just softening that slight bit again. If you need sharper corners then a good prime lens is going to be slightly better here but for a zoom lens the Z mount 24-70mm F2.8 is going to take some beating.
Vignetting
The 24-70mm F2.8 lens has only a very slight vignette which can be very easily cured by just clicking on “enable lens profile corrections” in your editing software and this will automatically correct any vignette there but if we look at the corner sharpness image above you can see how the corner brightness levels vary… at F2.8 the corner is darkest, with F4 yielding brighter results and F5.6 being practically perfect and removing any vignette in the image.
So the Nikon Z 24-70mm F2.8 S line lens has no real issue with vignetting, even shot wide open it’s still good.
Contrast
The contrast on the Nikon lens is fantastic and if you are like me and you tend to shoot a lot of backlit scenes then this lens will be great for you. In the still image below taken from my video, you see how there is still some very nice contrast in the scene even though there is a very bright light behind the mannequins.
It sort of simulates the effects of having the sun directly behind a model, there is still some very nice contrast in the scene and this is what sets it apart from other 24-70 f2.8 lenses out there, so well done Nikon.
Weather Sealing
As the Nikon Z 24-70 F2.8 lens is an S Lens it means it has a good degree of weather sealing, now before we go any further I should say Weather sealing and being waterproof are two totally different things and I for one never want to find the breaking point of the weather sealing on this lens.
In saying that I have accidentally tested that a few times over the years, getting caught on shoots at the beach in light showers and it was no issue to this lens.
How far you choose to trust the weather sealing is up to you but for me, it’s always just an insurance policy and never something I rely on.
Focus Speed and Focus Breathing
For the videographers focus breathing and focus speed as well as focusing noise can all be issues so let’s have a look at those next and see how well this lens performs. To get the best effect of how well this lens performs I highly recommend you watch the video further up this page where I have a complete section on them.
Focus breathing I can tell you is only very slight and there is no real issue there at all so well done yet again Nikon.
Focus speed is quick and positive and when compared to the F mount version it just seems a lot more positive and fluid for video shoots.
Focusing noise is where we see a big step forward though as this lens is very quiet when working.
Conclusion
This lens is simply amazing with exceptional contrast and pin-sharp even wide open, it renders some lovely out-of-focus backgrounds at wider apertures and all in a small form factor that simply delivers class in every department, that is why I always have the Z 24-70 F2.8 with me.
It would be one of the first lenses I would buy again if I were starting out again today so really well done Nikon on yet another amazing lens.
I have a Nikon Z 180-600mm Review here or my 180-600 video review here.
Thanks for reading and don’t forget to check out the video above if you really want to see more tech specs and test charts.
See you out there,
Kieran.
Nikon Z 24-70 F2.8 S Review and sample Images
My in-depth Nikon Z 24-70 F2.8 S review covering sharpness, Bokeh, focus speed, focus breathing, weight, size, build quality and value.
4.9