Nikon has lots of fancy lenses in their lineup. These keep us excited, but in terms of volume, the bread-and-butter lenses are certainly outselling them by some factors. One of them is certainly Nikkor Z 24-200mm f/4-6.3 VR, which will surely find its way into the bags of many consumer-grade Z cameras.
The massive 8.3x zoom range makes it an ideal companion for more casual photography, specifically for traveling, where many people simply prefer to avoid the bulk and weight of having to carry big setups. An 8.3x zoom lens isn’t going to be the sharpest knife in town, but let’s see whether it can fall into the “good enough” category.
The build quality of the lens is pretty high by consumer standards. The lens body is made of engineered plastics combined with a rubberized zoom ring and a plastic control ring. The latter can be programmed with the default set to manual focusing.
The zoom action is quite smooth. However, it’s a duo-cam construction, as you can see above, so it’s quite an “air pump”. Nikon did implement dust- and moisture sealing. However, only time will tell whether dust can still creep into the inner body. The tiny control-/focus-ring feels a bit cheap, but it does the job. Typical for its kind, there is a bit of zoom creeping. Nikon implemented a transport lock, at least. A petal-shaped lens hood is part of the package.
The AF speed is pretty quick and noiseless. As the name implies, the lens features an image stabilizer rated at 5 f-stops. Given the rather slow speed at 200mm, the VR is also very much needed here. Manual focusing is possible if the control ring is configured accordingly. As usual, it works “by wire.”
| Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Optical construction | 19 elements in 15 groups (2x ED, 1x hybrid, 2x aspherical) |
| Number of aperture blades | 7 (rounded) |
| min. focus distance | 0.5-0.7m (max. magnification: 1:3.6) |
| Dimensions | 76.5 x 114mm |
| Weight | 570g |
| Filter size | 77mm |
| Hood | petal-shaped, bayonet mount, supplied |
| Other features | fluorine coating, image stabilization, dust- & moisture resistant, zoom lock, programmable control ring |
Distortion
Let’s start with RAW image distortions first. Unsurprisingly, it is fairly massive at 24mm with a barrel distortion of over 6%. This switches to pincushion-type distortions after 35mm and they peak around the 2% mark at ~100mm. It stays on this level up to 200mm thereafter.
Most users are taking advantage of image auto-correction, which effectively suppresses the distortions, as you can see below.
Vignetting
The RAW vignetting characteristic of the Nikkor lens is fairly normal for a super zoom lens. At 24mm f/4, the light falloff exceeds 3EV (f-stops). Stopping down reduces the issue, although it never goes below 1 EV here. The vignetting isn’t quite as pronounced at longer focal lengths. In the middle range, it’s acceptable wide-open and good when stopped down to f/8. The vignetting increases again at the far tele end.
Activated auto-correction reduces the vignetting by over 1EV (f-stop) at 24mm. However, the light falloff is still easily visible at f/4 but acceptable at f/5.6 and is not an issue anymore from f/8. Longer focal lengths are nicely corrected, and vignetting isn’t really to worry about here.
MTF (resolution at 45mp)
The resolution figures of the Nikkor Z 24-200mm f/4-6.3 VR are a bit of a mixed bag. At 24mm, the broader center performance is perfectly fine straight from f/4. The same can’t be said about the outer image field. The borders are still acceptable, but the corners are soft at f/4. This improves slightly when stopping down, but the corners are never really sharp. The quality in the middle section of the zoom range is quite fine. At 40mm, the center remains very sharp, and the corners are good even at f/5. At 100mm, the center quality takes a hit, but the quality across the frame is good to very good here as well. As expected, there’s another drop in quality at 200mm. The center quality remains decent, however, and the outer image field maintains good results, albeit just.
Please note that the MTF results are not directly comparable across the different systems!
Below is a simplified summary of the formal findings. The chart shows line widths per picture height (LW/PH), which can be taken as a measure of sharpness. If you want to know more about the MTF50 figures you may check out the corresponding Imatest Explanations.
Chromatic Aberrations (CAs)
Lateral chromatic aberrations (color shadows at hard contrast transitions) are on the high side at the extreme ends of the zoom range. An average CA pixel width of 2px or more at the borders isn’t unexpected for such a lens but still – it could be better. The issue is much less pronounced around the 100mm mark.
Having said that, lateral CAs are easily correctable anyway.
Bokeh
Given its slow max aperture, the Nikkor Z 24-200mm f/4-6.3 VR isn’t a bokeh goddess. However, you can achieve shallow depth of field at closer focus distances or long focal lengths, so let’s have a look.
Of course, out-of-focus highlights aren’t perfect with such a lens. Surprisingly, they are already slightly edgy at max aperture, and stopping down emphasizes this further. There’s also some visible outlining, and the inner zone of the discs is somewhat busy.
On the positive side, the discs maintain a near-circular shape across the image frame (at 100mm at least) as you can see below.
The general blur in the focus transition zone is quite smooth in the image background – shown to the left below. The less critical foreground blur (to the right) is rougher with shadowy edges – see e.g., “the nose”.
Purple Fringing
One rather ugly aspect worth mentioning here is purple fringing at 24mm. The issue isn’t present in all images, but if there are hard contrasts in the image corners, the lens can produce rather massive color fringing.
Below is a 100% crop illustrating the issue. Purple fringing can be corrected manually with some effort, but it really spoils the experience.
Sun Stars (Experimental)
Sun stars/bursts are a diffraction effect caused by the edges where two aperture blades meet. They become visible when shooting pointy light sources. We simulate the real world by using an LED for this purpose.
The Nikkor has one of the weirdest sun star characteristics we have experienced so far—and we repeated this test several times at different light intensities and shutter speeds. Typically, sun stars aren’t produced at max aperture, but because the Nikkor doesn’t have a perfectly circular aperture to start with, there are “fan-like” rays visible even at 24mm f/4. These change to pointy rays at f/5.6, which is also unusual because the effect tends to show up much “later. The “cleanest” sun stars are possible at f/8. At f/11, they are somewhat polluted by some background haze, and at f/16, pointy and fan-like rays are all over the place. Very weird, indeed.
Sample Images
Just like most members of its class, the Nikkor Z 24-200mm f/4-6.3 VR isn't flawless. In terms of optical performance, its weakest spot is the 24mm setting. This is unfortunate because the far wide-end is probably also the most frequently used part of the range, given the typical applications. The question may be whether this is truly relevant for the target audience. We are performing our tests at 45 megapixels, whereas most of the users interested in such a lens probably own a camera in the 24-megapixel class. At this reduced resolution, the sharpness itself should be "good enough". A more difficult aspect is the purple fringing that we have observed in critical scenes. Its severity depends on the contrast difference, so it doesn't always hit, but it has the potential of ruining certain images. Coming back to the 45-megapixel scope, the resolution is great in the image center and decent at the borders. It's only the far corners that fall apart. Things improve drastically once you zoom out a little. We didn't test all focal lengths, of course, but in the spots that we tested, the best results were achieved at 40mm, where the lens is pretty impressive across the image field and the relevant aperture range. The quality is maintained at 100mm and decreases again at 200mm. Lateral CAs are on the high side in RAW images, and the extreme ends, but most auto-correction tools should handle this. The same goes for image distortions. Nikon even prohibits to disable distortion correction in-camera. The RAW vignetting is, unsurprisingly, high, but it's decently auto-corrected. The quality of the bokeh is Okay for such a lens, although not on prime level (obviously). The rendering of sun stars is ... strange ... but if you know what you are doing (choosing f/5.6 or f/8) it's quite fine.
The build quality is very decent for a consumer-grade lens. It feels quite sturdy overall - with the exception of the control ring and the question marks around the long-term reliability (centering) of a duo-cam zoom mechanism. We've experienced a bit of zoom creeping, so having the transport lock option in place when not using the lens is a good idea. The weather sealing is better than on most lenses in this class. However, the duo cam design means that it is an air sucker with all the potential consequences. The AF speed is good, and the VR is efficient.
Needless to say, the impressive zoom range gives you quite a bit of photographic freedom, and quality vs convenience is always a balancing act. If you use a Z camera with a moderate megapixel count, there isn't too much to worry about. If you expect super high-quality results at higher pixel densities, you may wish to look into Nikon's S-class lenses, though.
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Optical Quality
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Build Quality
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