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Nikkor Z 40mm F2 Review: Both Cheap and Fun?
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Jun 20, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of Nikon's inexpensive Nikkor Z 40mm F2 lens. | This video is sponsored by Fantom Duffel. Visit https://store.fantomwallet.com and use code DUSTIN20 to get 20% off | Read the Text Review: | Visit the Image Gallery: | Purchase the Nikkor Z 40mm F2 @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/4cg8A6d | Adorama https://howl.me/cmroYZzxgk5 | Amazon https://amzn.to/4ehRff2 | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/4kmf9 | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3Xlz2am | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3VCxzve | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3VCmqKK Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/ Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Adorama: https://howl.me/cjU0LKdp3LN Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18 Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Into the AM Clothing: https://bit.ly/intotheAMda and use code DUSTIN10 for 10% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: ============================= 0:00 - Intro and Concept 1:16 - Fantom Duffel
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Destin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my review of the Nikkor 40mm F2
0:16
This is a full-frame Z mount lens and it provides a great alternative for those of you who want
0:22
that normal angle of view. Actually, I find 40mm in many ways more useful than 50mm, your
0:28
mileage may vary, but it gives you a very compact, lightweight, and inexpensive option
0:34
to cover that normal angle of view, making it a really intriguing lens, particularly
0:38
at its current price point of about $230. I think it really makes more sense at that
0:43
price than it does at $300, which is the MSRP. So is this 40mm F2 worth adding to your Z
0:50
mount kit, particularly when, as we've already looked at, there is a less expensive lens
0:55
from Viltrox that does exist? Now, on that note, I will do a deeper dive into that and
1:01
give you a comparison between these two lenses. I've shot a lot of head-to-head stuff and
1:05
so I will be back with another video at some point in the future to cover that as well
1:10
And so we'll dive into all of the details, however, about the Nikkor lens right after
1:14
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2:06
So with this particular lens, as with one other Nikkor lens at this point, Nikon has
2:11
actually released two different versions of the lens. There's the standard version that
2:15
I'm evaluating here and then also a special edition. It's really more of a cosmetic difference
2:20
but for about $20 more you can get a lens that takes some retro styling cues back from
2:26
Nikon's film era. So probably more appealing to those of you that have some nostalgia for
2:32
lenses that looked a certain way and so that is available to you. However, while it's only
2:37
$20 difference in MSRP right now, there's a much bigger gap, at least in US pricing
2:42
where really you're paying more like $80 or $75 to $80 between the two. And so obviously
2:49
it's definitely the value proposition to go with the normal one. Now this lower price point of $230 US does place it in more direct competition with the
2:59
Viltrox which you can get for right under $160. But as we'll see in that video, there's
3:04
definitely some give and take between the two but some definite strengths for the Nikon
3:10
lens. Now one of those strengths isn't really the build quality itself. This is a very inexpensive
3:16
lens from a first party and so typically when you get an inexpensive lens from a first party
3:20
it means there's going to be some compromises. And one of the main compromises here is that
3:25
this is definitely a plastic fantastic up to and including the lens mount which is frankly
3:30
pretty rare in my experience these days. Basically only cheap first party lenses do I ever see
3:35
a plastic lens mount. Everyone else, even if they're producing a $60 lens will give
3:41
it a metal lens mount but such is life in the first party lenses
3:45
Now what is surprising considering we don't even have a metal lens mount is that there is some weather sealing included here. But even more surprising it doesn't include the
3:54
gasket at the lens mount which is kind of like the basic thing. If a lens has very basic
3:59
weather sealing it typically has a gasket at the mount. In this case no gasket at the
4:03
mount but about four seal points throughout the lens itself. So go figure. And so this
4:09
has some weather sealing though Nikon is a little bit ambiguous with the language as
4:13
to how much you should trust that. For me I'll happily use it out in rain but I certainly
4:18
wouldn't want to use it in kind of extreme conditions because I just don't think it's
4:22
a professional grade of weather sealing there. Outside of that there is nothing on the lens barrel itself. No switches, no buttons. Just
4:30
the control ring here. And so in this case it's not just a manual focus ring. It can
4:36
be assigned a couple of different functions. You could be on just manual focus. You could
4:40
make it an aperture ring. You could make an exposure compensation dial. The ring itself
4:44
moves pretty good. It has a decent amount of damping and while it is rubberized threads
4:52
here, there's nothing high end about it. But I do think the damping is of enough quality
4:57
that the manual focus experience is reasonably good. And so I do appreciate that
5:02
This is a very compact and lightweight lens even compared to the Viltrox lens which is
5:07
surprising since the Viltrox has a smaller maximum aperture of F2.5 versus F2. So in
5:14
this case the Nikkor lens is 70 millimeters in diameter. Basically it starts with as wide
5:18
as it needs to be to accommodate that lens mount which is very large on the Z mount bodies
5:24
and then it just carries that through solid. And so it's 70 millimeters or 2.8 inches in
5:30
diameter but then it is very short. It's only 45.5 millimeters or 1.8 inches and extremely
5:36
lightweight weighing only 170 grams. That is six ounces. Up front we have 52 millimeter
5:42
front filter threads but interestingly here not only is there not a lens hood included
5:48
which by the way the Viltrox does include a lens hood, but there's not even a bayonet
5:52
for a typical lens hood to go on there. So if you're going to use some kind of third
5:57
party lens hood you're actually going to have to use one that uses the filter threads
6:00
to thread on which certainly comes with its own kinds of inconvenience. So you know that's
6:05
something that I'm not necessarily delighted about. One area however that it is a kind of
6:11
a cut above your typical budget budget lens a lens like say the Canon RF 50 millimeter F1.8
6:17
is that inside we actually have nine curved aperture blades and so a little bit more of
6:22
a premium treatment for the aperture iris. Minimum focus distance here is 29 centimeters
6:27
which gives you a quite useful 0.17 times magnification. So again there's some
6:33
contradictions here. You've got weather sealing, you've got a nicer aperture iris
6:37
but you've got a plastic lens mount, you've got you know the very most basic of features not even
6:42
designed really for a lens hood. You know it's a lens that does come with some inherent
6:48
contradictions to it. Now when it comes to autofocus some of the same rules apply here
6:53
That is an STM or stepping focus motor but it is quite a snappy one in this application and I am
6:59
actually pleasantly surprised by how fast autofocus is and as you can see from the test indoors or
7:06
outdoors it's pretty close to instantaneous in terms of making focus changes. Not only that
7:11
but the focus motor is nice and quiet and I have to put my ear right next to it to make out even
7:18
the slightest bit of noise. It costs custom and focus and what you hear is a very very light kind
7:24
of shuffling as the focusing group moves back and forth there. For the most part I found autofocus
7:30
to be very precise. I would say shooting at large apertures it's pretty much always precise
7:35
I did notice however shooting at smaller apertures particularly when shooting landscapes
7:39
that sometimes focus seemed to have been in the right place and then right at the moment of
7:43
capture focus would kind of jump back to where it was focused right at the beginning of the frame
7:48
So there'd be just this tiny little section of the the scene in focus and then most of the focus
7:53
or most of the scene out of focus even though I was shooting at f5.6 or f8. Kind of an annoying
7:58
trait that fortunately was not routine but it did pop up more than once. I would say over the course
8:03
of my review I probably saw that three or four different times and it pretty much ruins the shot
8:08
when that takes place. So just something you might want to watch out for and obviously it's probably
8:12
going to help to have fewer points active. I like to shoot with most of the time with pretty much
8:17
all the points active and then override if need be and so in this case moving ahead I probably
8:23
would override more often in that situation to make sure I got focus where I wanted
8:29
Now on the video side of things I found again a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to the focus
8:34
pulls. There's no lack of speed. Focus pulls jump back and forth very quickly but what you'll also
8:40
see is these micro pulses to where it will go backwards when it needs to go forward and so you
8:45
have this quick kind of pedaling back and forth before focus moves to the place that it needs to
8:50
go. So that can be obviously a little bit of annoying as it can pretty much ruin a shot if
8:54
you've got a pull involved with it. Focus breathing is fairly low as you can see from the shot
9:00
and then when you get out into the real world doing those same kind of focus pulls I found
9:05
that there was unfortunately some of those same pulses that would happen sometimes here with these
9:09
you know rose bushes I was moving back and forth and I got one of those pulses in there which you
9:14
know I wasn't delighted about. I would say when it comes to my hand test that again it's a bit
9:20
of a mixed bag and that sometimes it made the transition fairly smoothly from my eye to my
9:25
hand and vice versa. In other cases it was really reluctant to move off my face to the hand even
9:31
though clearly the hand was the significant object in the frame and my face was not really visible
9:37
and so again a bit of a mixed bag there. I found for real world focus changes just kind of you know
9:44
pushing not trying to do so much focus pulls but just those natural transitions
9:48
there can be a little bit of abruptness there rather than this kind of cinematic
9:52
transition that was nicely damped. It's a little too quick. You can help that a little bit by
9:57
dialing down the speed of autofocus in the actual camera body but it doesn't entirely eliminate that
10:06
altogether and so just something where this lens shows a little bit of its kind of budget roots
10:11
when it comes to the autofocus system. So positives are it's fast, it's quiet, it's mostly accurate
10:18
for the video side of things and sometimes in landscapes it can just be a little bit abrupt
10:23
and not do what you want it to do. So let's talk about image quality itself. I will give you the
10:28
detailed image quality breakdown at the end of the review but here's the overview. Optical formula
10:33
here is six elements in four groups. Very simple. Two of those elements are spherical elements and
10:38
so a very simple optical design for those of you that are fans of simple optical designs. The MTF
10:44
chart is kind of ho-hum. I wouldn't be sold on this just based on the MTF chart and the kind of
10:51
the early reviews I had read before I had a chance to look at it suggested that the lens was better
10:55
than the MTF chart suggests and that is partially true as we're going to see today. The Viltrox is
11:00
definitely sharper as you can see here and in all of the side-by-side tests the Viltrox is consistently
11:06
the sharper lens of the two. The Nikkor however has definitely the nicer bokeh so it really comes
11:11
down to which you prefer. You don't get both here. You get either or with one of these lenses
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Now on some of the other technical sides of things I found longitudinal chromatic aberrations
11:21
that's fringing before and after the plane of focus. They exist but not strongly. There's more
11:26
of a spherical aberration that robs the lens of a bit of contrast particularly when you're up close
11:31
to the subject. I found that lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame were pretty
11:35
much non-existent so very nice and clean in that regard. Distortion is low. There's just the
11:43
tiniest degree of barrel distortion. I used a plus 2 to correct 4. You could leave it uncorrected and
11:48
probably never notice. However, vignette is really heavy. In fact, heavy enough that I don't think
11:53
that the profile actually completely deals with it. I can definitely see a difference in the viewfinder
11:58
on screen if I'm going from f2 to even f2.8 and beyond. The corners definitely brighten up and I
12:06
had to pretty much max out the sliders to eliminate it manually. You can see in this side-by-side
12:10
comparison with corrections on that there is a huge difference between the way that a shot looks
12:16
at f2 and f3.5. So vignette is definitely a factor here. It's heavy enough that even
12:22
electronic wizard really can't entirely eliminate it. When it comes to the chart test and that's
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looking at a 45 megapixel at 200 percent magnification, I would say I was somewhat
12:35
disappointed by what I saw at f2 on my chart test. I thought that the results might
12:41
look a little bit better than what they did and part of the reason for that is that I didn't feel
12:45
that my real world results looked quite as bad. Now there was some give and take with that. What
12:50
I found is that this lens does seem to be optimized for let's say six or seven feet, a few
12:56
meters and further. Up close I did feel like contrast was lower than what I would like and
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there's some bleeding towards the edges. If I moved to a little bit more distant subject I felt
13:06
like contrast actually improved and at infinity or landscape distances I felt like the contrast
13:13
looks pretty decent and it was better in the corners when it comes to that. So ironically I
13:19
didn't find so much improvement by focusing in the corners but I did find an improvement if I
13:23
was shooting at distance. I found that there is some improvement by f2.8. Vignette starts to
13:29
live contrast improves a little more noticeable improvement by f4 and by f5.6 to f8 things are
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looking pretty fantastic all across the frame. I found that for shooting landscapes f8 was actually
13:40
the the optimum aperture to shoot at if you want corner to corner sharpness. Diffraction does start
13:47
to show up at f11 and more so at f16 which is minimum aperture but I also felt like diffraction
13:52
really wasn't the worst thing here. I felt like it handled diffraction a little bit better than what
13:56
some lenses do. Really the standout to me here optically is the bokeh quality which is really
14:02
very nice for a lens like this. I felt like it was soft, it was creamy, specular highlights were fairly
14:09
round, not a lot of outlining to them and as I noted that was way better for me and my taste
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than what the Viltrox produces. Colors are good as you would expect with a first party lens but
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even in an inexpensive lens like this I felt like images had a richness to them and so images
14:25
actually look good almost always if you look at them on a global level and depending on where
14:31
focus was, how close the subject was, they would either look good or a little bit less good when
14:36
looked at at a pixel level depending on some of those other factors I've already mentioned
14:41
Flare resistance was fairly good wide open, a little bit of veiling, a little bit of loss of
14:47
contrast. When you stop down you will see a little bit more of a ghosting pattern there but
14:52
fortunately it's not terrible since we don't have a lens hood here. It handles I think fairly good
14:57
when it comes to that. So in conclusion, this really is an important lens in my opinion. Both
15:04
Canon and Nikon in their offerings here, they've been to this point starting to change on Nikon
15:11
but to this point it's been largely first party options there and so what that means is that the
15:17
inexpensive lenses tend to be really important because if they're reasonably good as I consider
15:21
this lens to be, it's a way for a person to get a better optical performance than a kit lens for
15:27
example or if they want to travel light this certainly qualifies for that. I think a lot of
15:31
people enjoy this lens for street for example and so there are certainly things to recommend it
15:37
It's cheap, it's lightweight, it's better optics than the cheap zooms that you might get in kit
15:42
I think that it does make more of an argument for itself as a value lens at $230 rather than $300
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and I wouldn't be surprised if we see prices kind of stay down at this point now that they've been
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discounted and I think at that price it really makes a pretty compelling argument for itself
16:00
Not as sharp as the Viltrox but it has some other things that are definitely going for it
16:05
and again I'll detail more of those in the head-to-head competition. So if you're looking for
16:09
a kind of a standard or normal angle of view and you don't want to spend a ton of money, this is a
16:15
great lens because it's so compact and lightweight you can throw it in your bag and bring it along
16:20
and have that alternate angle of view. So it's a lens that I actually intend to use myself
16:25
and I am going to add and keep to my own personal kit. I'm Dustin Abbott and if you want more
16:30
information you can look at the full text review that's linked in the description down below
16:34
Also linkage there to an image gallery and some buying links if you'd like to purchase one
16:39
Now if you're interested in a deeper dive into the optical performance, let's jump in together and see what we find. Okay so we'll start by taking a look at vignette
16:47
and distortion. So as noted distortion itself is really really low. You can see just the tiniest
16:52
little bit of bulge there in the middle. I used a plus two to correct for it and I got basically
16:57
perfectly straight lines. So no big deal there. You can see vignette is a whole other issue
17:02
however. It is definitely not only strong in the corners but you can see it penetrates pretty far
17:07
into the frame. Just giving the whole kind of frame a little bit of a dingy look and you can
17:11
see even pretty much maxing out the sliders that it took all of that and arguably just a hair more
17:18
to fully correct for it. Now in this case both of these shots have the standard profile attached
17:24
to them and so you can see the f2 shot it definitely still has kind of a bit of a vignette
17:31
look to it even after correction and here at f3.5 you know all other things being equal you can see
17:38
just how much brighter everything looks towards the edges of the frame. So that goes to show that
17:42
even the standard correction profile really doesn't completely eliminate that very heavy vignette
17:47
Now when it comes to longitudinal chromatic aberrations you can see particularly a little
17:51
bit of green fringing after the plane of focus. You can also tell it's not really strongly pronounced
17:58
the shot here for example of these daisies you know there's the potential for fringing around
18:02
the edges and what I see more so than the color fringing is more just a probably just a spherical
18:10
aberration to where there's just not quite perfect contrast and so there's a little bit of bleeding
18:15
at the edges less than a kind of a bright color look it's more just a bleeding that happens so
18:21
it's not a crisp transition from the light to the darker background. Now when it comes to resolution
18:27
and contrast using a 45 megapixel Nikon Z8 body this is at 200 percent magnification you can see
18:34
that in the center of the frame that resolution and contrast is good but not exceptionally so
18:40
it's just not really knock your socks off sharp for sure. Mid-frame actually looks a little bit
18:46
soft to my eye you can just see there's a lot of lacking contrast and just not a lot of fine detail
18:52
as we get down to the corner it gets kind of progressively worse this side not looking too
18:57
bad but by the time you get to the edge it basically has fallen apart. Now what's interesting
19:02
at least in this copy of the lens I would argue that it's better on the left side of the frame
19:06
than it is on the right and so maybe not perfectly centered here but you can see up here in the
19:12
corner even if this represents the stronger side quote-unquote you can see that it definitely still
19:17
is losing contrast towards the edges of the frame look at the black levels here compared to the
19:22
black levels there. Now if I compare this to the Viltrox 40 millimeter f 2.5 and put both lenses
19:28
at f 2.5 in the center of the frame you can see that the Viltrox is sharper and more contrasty
19:36
not by a huge margin but take a look at this writing here and compare it to what you see on
19:40
the Viltrox you can just see everything looks a little bit inkier when we get to the mid-frame
19:45
however it's a huge difference I mean you can see the Viltrox looks pretty flawless whereas the
19:50
Nikkor lens just looks pretty soft if we look over on the left side where the Nikkor is better
19:55
we can see that the Viltrox is still better better contrast and detail than what the Nikkor lens is
20:01
and if we compare this zone down here you can see that you know the Nikkor doesn't look bad but the
20:06
Viltrox does look a bit better we look over on this side and the difference is definitely more
20:12
pronounced once again now going back just to the Nikkor lens let's see how it does when you stop
20:16
it down a bit from f 2 to f 2.8 that stop you can see contrast is definitely improved here in this
20:22
zone in the ship you can see more detail the writing is a little bit darker looking at the
20:28
mid-frame this mid-frame zone right here really looks not great down on this side it is better but
20:34
you can see it's still not amazing and we can see that there's improvement definitely to contrast
20:40
vignette is starting to lift and looking better but you can also still see that there's not a lot
20:45
of great detail there in the corners of the frame from f 2.8 to f4 you can see that the corners
20:53
start to improve with a little bit more improvement by f 5.6 and then definitely more improvement by
21:01
f8 by f8 things are looking pretty great here though this zone in the mid-frame is still kind
21:07
of weak to my eye it's better on this side but it's actually not great as of yet down in this
21:13
zone it's just you can tell that the mid-frame is not the strength for this lens this side looks
21:18
pretty good at f8 and up into this corner is looking pretty good upper right corner is looking
21:25
pretty good at f8 as well as i noted earlier in the summary however i do think this lens performs
21:32
better out at further distances than what i would for my chart test so if i'm looking at this f2
21:38
image and so obviously in the center of the frame looks pretty good and if i move off to the edge of
21:42
the frame here i can tell that it's softer but it really doesn't look too bad certainly what i would
21:47
consider usable likewise on this side it looked quite usable right out to the edge of the frame
21:54
at the same time if i compare to f 5.6 and we revisit this you can see how much it really
21:59
has improved how much brighter this edge looks how much crisper the textures are if we look even in
22:06
these stones on the building you can just see there's so much more detail that's present there
22:10
over here on this bridge and as we pan out towards the side you can see looking for example in this
22:16
fallen tree back here it's just it's a little indistinct by comparison they're much crisper here
22:21
and so obviously this is a lens that does benefit from stopping it down so returning to the chart
22:27
for the moment we can see that diffraction is starting to soften things a bit by f11 though
22:32
not by a whole lot here and by f16 it has softened yet more but not nearly as extreme as what i see
22:40
on some lenses this is not too bad a performance when it comes to dealing with diffraction so while
22:46
we have a pretty decent level of magnification here i'm not super impressed by the up-close
22:53
performance it just doesn't have a lot of detail and sharpness at f2 you can see in this real
22:59
world three-dimensional shot i mean there's a little bit of fringing there that's not the major problem here it's more just a lack of contrast up close where you know there's some
23:09
information there but it doesn't really look crisp if you move out just a little bit further
23:14
things start to improve though you can see that the textures aren't exactly popping but overall
23:19
i really like the look of the image it's handled all these areas of transition to defocus kind of
23:25
these transition zones they actually look quite good this shot here it's holding up well and
23:31
you can see that the shape of the specular highlights really looks quite good in that shot
23:36
now when it comes to flare resistance you can see a little bit of ghosting unveiling more like
23:41
just some prismatic haze right there at the kind of epicenter of the sun here's another shot here
23:47
and you can see in this composition there's a tiny bit of a ghosting pattern but if it wasn't
23:51
kind of a uniform background you probably wouldn't see it you stop the lens down this is at f11 you
23:58
can see that the ghosting pattern does become a little bit more pronounced but never too bad
24:03
i never could produce much in terms of a sun star that's not really a strength for this lens
24:08
this final shot here is one that i'll show in comparison to the viltrox and so we can see
24:13
all the good and the bad here so as far as the the bad the contrast and detail isn't spectacular here
24:21
but the backdrop and the bokeh is quite nice and there's far less outlining than what we'll see on
24:27
the viltrox lens i'm going to call the image quality performance here balanced rather than
24:33
particularly strong in one direction or another well thanks as always still stick around to the
24:38
very end and i hope that the optical deep dive has illuminated some things for you and helped
24:43
you to make a more informed buying decision as always thanks for watching have a great day and
24:48
let the light in
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