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Nikon NIKKOR Z 35mm F/1.4 Lens Review

Design, Build & Handling

At first glance, the Z 35mm F/1.4 looks strikingly similar to its sibling, the 50mm F/1.4. Nikon deserves credit for maintaining design consistency across these lenses. Weighing just 415 grams, it is compact and lightweight, making it a highly portable choice.

The lens sports a 62mm filter diameter and boasts a premium, robust build. When paired with the Nikon Z6III, it achieves excellent balance – a setup ideal for both photography and videography.

The design is minimalistic, featuring only two rings: the focus ring and the customizable control ring. Unlike some other lenses, it lacks additional buttons. Nikon’s reasoning here seems clear – photographers and videographers often use focal lengths like 35mm and 50mm for video work, especially on gimbals. The simpler design ensures quick lens swaps without the hassle of recalibration.

Autofocus Performance

The Z 35mm F/1.4 is equipped with a stepping motor, offering fast, silent autofocus performance. While there’s no built-in image stabilization, the lens delivers smooth, quick focussing both during the day and in low light conditions.

For video shooters, the autofocus transition between points is remarkably smooth. Nikon has also done an excellent job correcting focus breathing, resulting in cinematic-quality footage that filmmakers will appreciate.

Image Quality

When it comes to performance, the image quality from this lens is impressive. Photos are sharp and well-detailed in daylight, while low light conditions allow for atmospheric shots with excellent depth and mood.

While there are minor focus-hunting issues in specific scenarios, you can work around them to achieve results. Edge sharpness exhibits slight softness, but overall, the lens delivers good performance.

Flaring & Ghosting

Very minimal flaring against a light source

Despite lacking the fluorine coating found in Nikon’s S-series lenses, the Z 35mm F/1.4 handles flaring surprisingly well. Even though Nikon includes a lens hood in the box, you can often leave it behind to maintain a minimal and stealthy setup.

That said, because of the absence of fluorine coating, the front element tends to attract dirt and oil more quickly. A microfiber cloth will be essential to keep the lens clean.

Bokeh Performance

If you’re a fan of creamy bokeh, the Z 35mm F/1.4 won’t disappoint. The lens produces smooth, round bokeh across most of the frame. However, in certain areas, the bokeh can appear slightly squished, resembling an egg shape.

Chromatic Aberration (CA)

Running the lens through the Quick MTF app gave an output of 0.42 pixels for chromatic aberration. For a prime lens in this category, that’s a solid result and within acceptable limits.

Verdict

So, what’s our take on the NIKKOR Z 35mm F/1.4? At a price point of ₹89,999, it’s ₹10,000 more than Nikon’s 50mm F/1.4. However, when you compare it to competitors like Sony and Canon, whose 35mm F/1.4 lenses start at around ₹1.4 lakh, Nikon’s offering stands out as a fantastic value-for-money option.

For many photographers, a 50mm can feel too tight, and a wider 35mm is the perfect solution – offering a broader field of view without noticeable distortion. Whether you’re a street photographer looking for versatility or someone who needs a lightweight, travel-friendly lens that performs in both daylight and low light, the Z 35mm F/1.4 is an excellent choice.

Nikon NIKKOR Z 50mm F/1.4 Lens Review

Whose it For?

The 50mm is probably my favourite lens and for the ones that’ve been shooting for a while, these were the lenses that everyone would invest in, before brands started giving the options for the 24, 35mm, etc. The beauty of this lens is that it is versatile and can be used for a variety of applications – street photography, portraits, weddings, etc. And it is built like that as well.

Look, Body & Feel

At first glance you can instantly feel that this lens is light and compact as compared to other 1.4 lenses. It weighs 420g with a filter size of 62mm. It feels well-built and premium, which means that the materials used are good and at this price point it is weather sealed.

And when attached to the Nikon Z6III, which we have used to review this lens, it feels well-balanced.

Feels well-balanced with Z6 III – still from our review video

This lens has very minimal controls. There is one ring set to control focus, and another ring you can set to do other functions like exposure compensation in-camera. And that’s it. There’s no dedicated aperture ring, no more custom programmable buttons, no AF-MF switch, and no other bells & whistles. It also doesn’t come with their VR image stabilization technology.

With that in mind, let’s move on to the image quality tests, and let’s see if they have cut any corners.

Image Quality

The pics from the lens are good. In daylight the pictures are sharp and well-detailed, yes they aren’t the sharpest on the edges but the quality that it is able to deliver is great.

In lowlight, the image quality is similar to daylight with adequate amount of sharpness throughout the frame, more in the center and tapers off in the sides.

Autofocus

Even the autofocus performance of the lens is good. This has a stepping motor and at most it works fast and silent, which makes making pictures very easy and stealthy. So be it day time or night time, due to its wide aperture this lens is super fast at acquiring focus.

Bokeh

With a prime lens you are always looking for those beautiful bokeh and this lens doesn’t disappoint. The bokeh are well rounded and nice. In some cases, you do see the onion or egg shapes but overall they are very pleasing to the eye.

CA Value

As usual, we tested the lens through QuickMTF and got a CA value of 0.60 pixels, which at this price point is decent. This is one area where more expensive lenses might have the edge on this one, but regardless, it can be corrected in post very easily.

Lens flare and ghosting

There is very minimal lens flaring and ghosting in the lens and if you use it smartly then it can actually give you some creative output.

Conclusion

So what do we think about the NIKKOR Z 50mm F/1.4 lens? Nikon has possibly hit the sweet spot with this lens. You get all of this performance in a compact and light body for a price of Rs. 80k. And in comparison there are options from the competitors that start at ₹1.3 lakhs and I know what you are thinking. Nikon also has that option with their F/1.8 S lens. But this also makes me wonder why would a consumer buy this when they can get a S lens for ₹50k?

Check out our video review:

NIKKOR Z 28-400mm f/4-8 VR Lens Review

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Nikon recently launched the new 28-400 mm lens for its full frame Mirrorless Z range of cameras. The lens is priced at Rs. 1,28,995 and it comes in the all-round superzoom category. Now the reason why I call this lens an all-round lens, because it can go as wide as 28mm all the way upto 400, making it a very versatile lens to use.

But the important questions here is – who is this targeted to? It’s targeted to someone who is an amateur wildlife enthusiast, street photographers, may be sports, although it isn’t fast enough for that.

Look, Body and Feel

The first thing I notice about the lens is that it is pretty light. This weighs only 725 gms and for a superzoom lens that it pretty light. For this review I am using this with the Nikon Z7 ii and overall it feels like a sturdy package to lug around. At the front you have the 77mm diameter for the lens along with the focus and zoom ring on the lens.

The lens is slightly hard to extend, but over time I feel it will loosen up a little. But there is a lens lock button that is provided to avoid accidental lens creep. I like the build quality of the lens as well, it feels well-built and sturdy. What I am surprised with is the weather sealing, although the specs say that it does feature weather sealing, visibly it is lesser that other lenses that i’ve seen. So this means that the production standard might’ve improved for that to not be visible anymore.

Image Performance

Now with a lens like this where you have the F-stop at F/4-8, it will always be difficult to get the best performance in lowlight, because it won’t allow much light to get in, especially in lowlight scenarios. Another thing to note is that after 200mm, the lens also shifts to an F/8 for shooting.

Shutter Speed: 1/640s, Aperture: f/8, ISO:200, Focal Length: 400mm

Now in terms of images in daylight, the performance of the lens is pretty good. At 28mm the pics are sharp, detailed and also are pleasing to the eye. But as you start moving higher in the focal range you can see that the images do have certain softness on the edges and also on zooming in, it will lose some clarity. Now this isn’t something to be surprised about, most lenses in the superzoom category are like that, so this isn’t unusual.

In daylight the focusing is also fast. This lens uses the STM motor, which is the stepping motor to autofocus. It is pretty smooth and quiet, which can be useful when shooting videos. And since it has a longer focal ranges it can be very useful for shooting documentaries. The videos we shot with this were very good (watch video review here), stable and there was quality output. Another good thing that I liked is that the lens features in-built vibration reduction, which works upto 5 stops and the performance of that was also very good.

Shutter Speed: 1/200s, Aperture: f/8, ISO:2000, Focal Length: 400mm

But as good as the lens is in terms of autofocus in daylight, it does hunt slightly in the lowlight conditions. But truth be told I wasn’t expecting the lens to perform very well in lowlight, but I was surprised with the performance. The overall images are good, yes there is a focusing challenge, but when it focuses it delivers good pics. What I like is that with a focal range like this you can use this for street photography also, especially the pics showed good contrast and surprisingly were well lit.

The depth and bokeh as well on the lens were pretty good in both daylight and lowlight.

Minimum focusing distance

For a versatile lens with a superzoom, this lens also gives you the option for getting in closer. The minimum focusing distance of the lens at 28mm is 0.66 ft and at 400mm is 3.69 ft, which is pretty good. The images at both 28mm and 400 mm are pretty decent and I really like the performance in this case. Yes, at the closer range there is surely sharpness at the centre and more softness on the sides. But if used wisely then it can surely be an asset.

Lens flare and ghosting

In terms of the lens flare and ghosting, this is probably one of the best lenses that I have seen in recent times. There is hardly any lens flare of ghosting even when we shot intentionally to test it. The images from the lens under varied scenes don’t show any visible glaring and ghosting and that was something that I was really impressed with.

Shutter Speed: 1/125s, Aperture: f/7.1, ISO:200, Focal Length: 140mm

Chromatic Aberration

In terms of CA value, the lens does display a value of 0.84 pixels, which is on the higher side.

Conclusion

So how do I find the new Nikon 28-400 mm lens for the Z mount? Honestly my feelings are mixed. Yes it isn’t a lens that will completely blow your mind from the onset. Because it really isn’t a fast lens, which means that you start thinking about its performance, atleast in lowlight. But I was pleasantly surprised with it. The daylight performance is very good, it’s well built and overall gives a good performance. The performance in lowlight could be better though.

But more importantly it gives the user the opportunity to do away multiple lenses at a price of Rs. 1.3 lacs. Which means you don’t have to carry that additional gear. And that to me sounds like a good scenario to be in.

Bhavya Desai