dSLR Dad

I love this site. If you have never visited PhotoZone, head over there now. They have posted their review of the new Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S Nikkor Zoom Lens (available at Amazon and B&H Photo). Nikon announced this lens earlier this fall along with the D3 and D300.

The Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED exceeds the already very good performance of its predecessor. The center quality is nothing short of outstanding matching or beating the resolution of a 10mp APS-C sensor. The border quality is very good at large aperture increasing to excellent levels at f/5.6-8. However, you’ve to be careful with the curved focus field at 24mm which can result in out-of-focus background corners! Distortions and vignetting are very low and not really field relevant. Chromatic aberrations are generally well controlled although they could have been somewhat more symmetrical (in the tested sample). The bokeh (out-of-focus blur) is unusually smooth and buttery for a zoom lens with aspherical elements. Please note, however, that 70mm f/2.8 isn’t terribly fast on an APS-C DSLR so you’ve to be fairly close to your main subject in order to produce a pronounced out-of-focus blur. The build quality of the lens is superb and it´s a joy to handle it in the field despite its comparatively hefty size and weight. The high speed and low noise of the silent-wave AF drive is the cream on top of it all. The primary aspect which can spoil the game is, unsurprisingly, the high price point of around 1500€/US$.

You can read the full review here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 6:28 AM and is filed under Camera Lens Reviews, Camera Lens and Accessories, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.