NIKKOR Z 24-200mm f/4-6.3 VR Telephoto Zoom Lens for Nikon Z Cameras - Black

Here is my honest review after 9 months and many thousands of pictures in the role of Landscape Photographer Enthusiast: The Z 24-200mm F4-6.3 is a fabulous lens for the Nikon Z mount. It was my first Z mount lens and has gone everywhere with me in the nine months that I have had it including photography workshops. It has replaced in my bag any f mount glass that I own in the focal range of 24mm through 200mm including Tamron’s great 24-70mm G2 2.8 and 70-200 G2 2.8 lenses. Images are sharp at all focal ranges and apertures. Pros: Size - It is relatively small and compact Sharpness - Is very very good especially for a super zoom Single lens - Don’t need to change the lens should a composition require something much longer or wider. Image Stabilization - Nikon included IS in this lens Focus Speed - While I am sure this is not up to par with the much more costly new Z pro lenses, I find the focus acquisition quiet and pretty snappy. Focus Breathing - As a landscape photographer, I sometimes find myself forced to focus stack due to subjects both really near and far. The lens does not have much, if any, ‘breathing’ effect (the image appearing to zoom in or out) from me changing the focus point. Cons: Maximum Aperture - This lens reaches its maximum aperture 6.3 pretty quickly in its zoom range. For the landscapes that I shoot, I am in the range between f8 to f16, this is not a problem and the images at these apertures are still so sharp. But should you need a shallow depth of field for subject isolation, I would then tend to lean to either my 70-200 or 24-70 2.8 zooms, say portraits for example. Sun Stars - The aperture has only 7 blades and while I don’t fret much about chasing bokeh, it does impact the quality of a sun star - shooting into the sun with a small aperture. Conclusion: Of the thousands of pictures that I have taken over the last 9 months, this lens has taken the majority of those pictures. I have now produced many wonderful prints using it on my Z7ii that exceed 42 inches (I like me a pano). I believe it would benefit anyone, as it was in my case, as their first Z mount lens, a travel lens, or a ‘one hit’ wonder. While it does have a few limits as noted above, I have been nothing but happy with this purchase. Attached is just a very small example of a Panorama I took of Mt Saint Helens in October, compiled and then zoomed to 50% to show the detail.

The image quality is super good during all focus distances even at 200mm. And it's well weather sealed. Compared with $1000 sony 24-240, the z 24-200 is definitely a win since the sony 24-240 image quality is quite soft and distortion is server. For cannon 24-240, z 24-240 is still better. The only con of this lens is the aperture gets smaller way faster, where it would get to 6.3 after focal length reaches 70mm. However, from my point of view, this lens is mainly for travel and landscape, where rare situation would require the largest aperture (landscape always smaller than f8 at least), and for night, holding by hand would be a little messy in deed, where the iso would be quite high with low light. Therefore I would give 5 stars considering the using situation.

I bought this initially as a travel walk around lens for days when I needed a wide range of focal length and didn't want too much gear. I was very good for that except not much bokeh when zoomed out all the way. Last week, I used this as a photo lens at the US Climbing Youth Nationals, mounted on both a Z6ii and Z7ii . I also used the Z 24-120 F4 S lens. The 24-200 gave me the reach I needed without too much sacrifice to IQ compared to the 24-120 S. As long as I had decent light, I was very happy with the results. For a few backlit situations at full zoom, I did miss the F4 aperture.