Nikon Z 28‑400mm f/4‑8 VR Review

Introduction

Ease of Use

Weighing in at 725g (1 lb 9.6oz) and measuring 141.5mm (5.6in.) in length (when set to the 28mm focal length), the Z 28‑400mm f/4‑8 VR is a very lightweight and compact lens given the incredibly versatile focal range of 24-400mm that's on offer.

It feels well balanced when using it with a mid-sized camera body like the Z8 that Nikon provided for us to test it with, as shown in the product photos, and would also be equally at home mounted on a smaller Z-series camera.

It's important to note that the lens does gradually extend further by an additional 100mm to reach a total length of 241.5mm when fully zoomed out to 400mm, so it's not as compact as it first looks when set to the 28mm focal length.

Build quality is good, but not outstanding, for what is after all only an enthusiast-level lens. With a mostly plastic construction, the Z 28‑400mm f/4‑8 VR feels fairly solid in your hand, and it commendably has a metal mount.

Note that this lens also has a weather-resistant design to help protect it against dust and moisture. Nikon state that "The lens is not guaranteed to be dust- and drip-resistant in all situations and under all conditions."

There is a single switch on the left-hand side of the Z 28‑400mm f/4‑8 VR lens which is for locking the barrel at the 28mm focal length to prevent zoom creep when carrying the lens and camera around.

There are no other external switches or buttons at all on this lens, so you'll need to delve into the camera menus to choose between auto-focusing and manual focusing.

The built-in 5.0 stops of image stabilisation are important when hand-holding such a long lens, and the system thankfully works very well, ensuring that you can shoot at slower shutter speeds than 1/400th and still get sharp results (obviously depending on your technique).

If you mount it on a Nikon Z camera that has Synchro VR capability, you can shoot up to 5.5 stops slower. Note that there is no external control on the lens for turning image stabilisation on or off.

Located towards the lens mount end of the Nikon Z 28‑400mm f/4‑8 VR lens, there’s the first (and smallest) of the lens’ two rings. By default it is the manual focus ring, but in autofocus mode it can be used to engage manual focus override or alternatively set the aperture, exposure compensation or ISO speed.

The manual focus ring has no hard stops at either end, making it harder to know when you have reached infinity focusing. It has just enough resistance to make fine adjustments to manual focusing, without having too much give.

The second ring is the generously sized zoom ring, which has focal lengths marked at 28, 35, 50, 70, 105, 200, 300 and 400mm and rotates through 90 degrees from 24mm to 105mm.

The zoom ring is ridged and the control ring is knurled, helping you feel them by touch when shooting through the viewfinder.

Auto-focusing is satisfyingly quick and quiet thanks to the onboard linear stepping motor which makes it ideally suited to both stills shooting and video. 

Shooting with the lens proves it to have almost unerringly accurate and rapid autofocus in the majority of situations, with barely any hunting at all. It’s also impressively quiet, too.

This lens ships with both a good quality squared design lens hood (HB-114) and a soft pouch (CL-C2), plus the two lens caps.

The hood can be inverted to save space when storing the lens, and you can even shoot with it while still inverted.

Focal Range

The Nikon Z 28‑400mm f/4‑8 VR's focal range provides an angle of view of 75° at 28mm and 6°10′ at 400mm.

28mm

400mm

Chromatic Aberrations

Chromatic aberrations, typically seen as blue or purple fringes along contrasty edges, were not especially apparent in our test shots, only appearing in very high contrast areas.

Vignetting

With the Nikon Z 28‑400mm f/4‑8 VR lens set to its maximum aperture, there is some obvious light fall-off in the corners, which you'll either need to correct in post-processing or stop-down the aperture to avoid.

28mm

400mm

Distortion

There's some mild barrel and pin-cushion distortion at either end of the focal range in both the JPEG and Raw files, but it's not too pronounced. Note that Auto Distortion Control is set to On when this lens is mounted and cannot be turned off.

28mm

400mm

Sunstars and Flare

The Nikon Z 28‑400mm f/4‑8 VR produces very nice sunstars when stopped-down to f/22, as shown below, although it is prone to flare when shooting directly into the sun even with the lens hood fitted.

Macro

The Nikon Z 28‑400mm f/4‑8 VR offers a minimum focusing distance of 0.2m (0.66ft) at the 28mm focal length  and 1.2m (3.94ft) when zoomed to 400mm, with a maximum magnification of 0.35x at the 28mm focal length.

Bokeh

Bokeh is a word used for the out-of-focus areas of a photograph, and is usually described in qualitative terms, such as smooth / creamy / harsh etc.

In the Z 28‑400mm f/4‑8 VR lens, Nikon have employed an iris diaphragm with 9 rounded blades, which combined with the rather slow maximum aperture results in fairly nice bokeh in our view.

We do realise, however, that bokeh evaluation is subjective, so we've included lots of examples below for your perusal.

Sharpness

In order to show you how sharp the Nikon Z 28‑400mm f/4‑8 VR lens is, we are providing 100% crops on the following pages.