Nikon Z 100-400mm S. First look.

hey everybody in today's video we're gonna be taking a first look at the new zed mount 100 to 400. [Music] [Music] so in this first look video of the 100 to 400 we're going to be covering the general questions that people have about new lens so we'll look at some of the specifications we'll also look at its size and weight compared to other lenses and i've shot some comparison shots side by side to show you its size we also talk about how it handles how it feels in the hand we'll definitely talk about its picture quality how sharp it is compared to other lenses so we're going to be comparing against things like the f-mount 500 millimeter f 5.6 the f mount 180 to 400 to get a good idea about where this sits in terms of pitch quality especially if you're currently using f-mount longer lenses obviously this is the first z-mount longer focal length lens longer than the 70-200 we also look at some focus performance we'll also look at some focus breathing and then i've got a couple of sample images as well now i've not had really long with this lens i've literally only had it for a couple of days and i am really thankful that i was able to have this lens for a couple of days because they are quite rare quite difficult to get hold of so i tried to do as many tests as i can in such a short period of time but there'll be definitely other tests that i want to do that i'll do when i get a full production unit keep in mind as always this is a pre-production unit as well the biggest question for me is can this 100 to 400 replace my existing longer focal length lenses like my 500 millimeter f 5.6 my 600 millimeter f4 my 180 to 400. so that insight i'll try and give you a summary at the end of this video first of all let's talk about specification let's talk about what this lens is and what it can do first off the bat it's obviously a z-mount 100 to 400 it's an s-line lens which means in general it's some of the higher performing z-mount lenses that fits in line with things like the 70-200 2.8 the 24 to 72.8 the to 24 2.8 and so on if you were going to compare this to an existing f-mount lens the closest comparison would probably be the 80 to 400 for f-mount cameras now i've not done any comparisons with or against the 80 to 400 because i just don't have an 80 to 400 i've never used that lens it wasn't a lens that i was particularly interested in mainly because i used the 200 to 500 a lot more it's a 4.5 to 5.6 now i know that a lot of people don't like the idea of a variable aperture lens but there are some benefits to that the smaller size and the lower weight if this was a constant f4 or if it was a constant 5.6 generally be a little bit larger to maintain that constant aperture especially if it was a constant f4 if we take a look at the 180 to 400 that's a constant f4 and it's obviously a lot larger so you do have to keep in mind that if this was a constant aperture that would then sacrifice on size and weight so it just comes down to the flexibility between a variable aperture and then also that size and weights factor of this as well the outer barrel does have the top plate display that we're used to this is generally the same that's on 70 to 200 24 to 70s and so on we then also have lens function buttons so as with the 70 to 200 2.8 we have a lens function one and a lens function too and then those lens function two buttons rotate all the way around the barrel so as a whole there are five function buttons on the lens and obviously depending on what you want to set them to depends on how you're going to use them but generally there's a lens function one and a lens function too in terms of the barrels we have the focal length barrel at the front we then have the manual focusing ring behind that and then behind that again we have a function ring this function ring is customizable with different features depending on what you want to assign it to we then have a rotatable color so this color can be freely rotated around the lens there's no limitation to that and you can obviously have a titan screw to tighten it up but you cannot remove the collar you can only remove the foot this is the same as it was with a 70 to 200 2.8 one thing that some of you might be interested in especially those of you like to buy replacement feet or arca swiss feet the foot on the 100 to 400 is the same foot that's on the 70-200 2.8 z-mount lens so if you've got a z-mount 70-200 2.8 and you've already bought an arca swiss foot for that lens that will then attach and fit rid without any issues so definitely something that's worth keeping in mind inside the dial on the collar you'll also find the kensington lock which is the same as with that 70 to 200 2.8 as well this lens does borrow a lot of things from the 70 to 200 2.8 right at the end of the lens we do have our auto focus and manual focusing switch and then we have our focusing range switch so we can keep our lens in a full range or we could set it to three meters to infinity so this is particularly useful if you know that you're only shooting subjects from that three meter range all the way to infinity the lens does have vr built in and depending on the camera that you're using this with so if you're using it with a camera that has an inbuilt image stabilization system like a z6 or a z7 or a z9 then you can make use of both the vr in the lens and the image stabilization in the body now if you are using this on a z9 if you're lucky enough to use this on a z9 then you will get what's called synchro vr so this improves the synchronization quite literally between the in-lens vr and the in-body vr that means that you get increased stabilization you get increased stabilization performance there are a couple of other lenses that do that as well on the z9 but this 100 to 400 is one of them filter size is 77 millimeters and there's also a rubber ring around the front of the lens so if you did put it down on a flat surface you wouldn't have any concerns or problems with it kind of breaking the front of the element or anything like that but there is a nice squishy protective rubber ring around the front of the lens other thing to worth noting about the outside of the lens the zoom barrel the the movement of the zoom barrel is very short so it is an extending lens so it will extend it doesn't internally zoom it is an extending zoom lens but it is short it doesn't extend too far and the actual movement of the barrel only moves by 80 degrees so it's a very short throw from 100 to 400 you basically just don't have to re move your arm you can do it in pretty much one turn of your wrist so if you do need to quickly zoom from 100 to 400 this is much faster than previous lenses or other zoom lenses because of that very short throw to get from 100 to 400 so it doesn't require a lot of work to zoom this lens in and out there is no lock switch or anything like that to stop the lens from creeping but the lens has been designed internally to stop that from happening so no matter what you do generally i'm over the past couple of days of me using it i've not seen the lens kind of creep out either so no matter what you do with it generally it shouldn't creep also the weight of the lens the balance of the lens is much more towards the rear of the lens so the center of gravity doesn't move all that much when you mount this on your camera even when you extend it to 400 it's still a very well balanced and evenly balanced lens nikon's put a lot of internal work into making sure this lens balances equally even when zoomed out all the way to 400 it's not a very front heavy lens like some of the other zoom lenses are things like a 200 to 500 and stuff like that the minimum focusing distance of this lens is 0.75 meters or 75 centimeters at the wide end and it's just under one meter at the tele end so you effectively have a 400 mil lens with a minimum focusing distance of one meter and it is made in japan and now i know that some people quite like the idea of knowing where their lens is made with differences between different locations but this 100 to 400 is made in japan and for those of you that have tele converters those of you that have the z-mount tele-converters the 1.4 times and the two times tele-converter this lens will work with both so when you use this with the 1.4 times teleconverter it becomes a 140 millimeter to a 560 millimeter and when you use this with the two times teleconverter that becomes a 200 to 800 which is actually a really interesting focal length so 200 to 800 with the two times teleconverter do keep in mind though that teleconverters don't just change your focal length they also change your aperture as well so this being a 5.6 at the long end with a 1.4 times teleconverter applied it becomes a 560 millimeter f8 so it's a 140 to 560 f8 and then do keep in mind that when you're using that two times converter at the long end it becomes an f11 so please do keep that in mind just get a little bit dark but obviously newer cameras better at higher iso performance and mirrorless cameras can still focus at that as well so i wouldn't worry too much about using the teleconverters what i'd be more concerned about is overall picture quality loss how much sharpness are we losing and i'll show you some examples of that very shortly but you can use the 1.4 times and the two times teleconverters z-mount tele-converters on this lens if you want to only weighs just over 1355 grams so it's not the heaviest lens in the world don't get me wrong it's definitely not the lightest but it doesn't feel as heavy as it should be it doesn't feel too light because i know there's a lot of lenses that sometimes can feel too light but the first time you pick it up you definitely feel like oh i was expecting it to be heavier so the so the weight of this lens is actually pretty impressive so when it comes to the outright picture quality of this lens overall i'm really impressed the first thing i decided to do was compare it against the 180 to 400 f mount this 180 to 400 is a significantly more expensive lens and it's a constant f4 aperture it has a built-in 1.4 times tele-converter so it is a higher grade lens don't get me wrong i wouldn't say to anybody that this lens would replace that lens they're two completely different lenses but because they are similar focal lengths it's easy for me to compare them side by side and it also gives you a good idea about how much better a more expensive lens would be optically when it comes to their picture quality realistically i honestly can't see any difference so both lenses here are f 5.6 the 180 to 400 is actually stopped down from f4 to 5.6 zoomed in to 200 percent and i literally can't see any difference this is both on a this is on a z72 high resolution the detail between the two is incredible the 100 to 400 easily stacks up to the quality of a 180 to 400 and then compared them both with their teleconverters attached now keep in mind that the 180 to 400 as it has its own built-in dedicated teleconverter whereas the 100 to 400 is using the z-mount teleconverter and again we can see that there's very little difference between the two now we're using these 1.4 times teleconverters but still very similar when it comes to using this lens out about i think it does come down to the subject matter that you want to be shooting as to whether this lens is going to be right for you or not if i'm finding myself shooting a lot of small birds i might feel like i need a longer focal length there's a lot of time where i feel like 400 can just be a little bit too short that's never really the case when it comes to larger mammals or when it comes to sports 100 to 400 covers are great range there but those of you that are interested in birds especially smaller birds or woodland birds might find that the 100 to 400 on its own without teleconverter could be a little bit short that might be where the 200 600 comes in that's still on nikon's roadmap or even longer lens than that possibly this all comes down to you knowing your style of photography and your subject matter i'm really happy with the results of this and even when you're doing a little bit of cropping just to close that gap or close the distance to your subject especially on a high megapixel camera you still get fantastic detail and results out of this with that cropping if you need to maintain a high megapixel count then you can obviously still use those tele converters and keep your megapixel count high without sacrificing megapixels you get that extra focal length from the teleconverter i definitely feel like the 1.4 is the teleconverter to go to i wouldn't necessarily feel like i would use the two times all the time but the 1.4 on this just gives me that extra bit of focal length and the performance is very similar to when you're not actually using that 1.4 times tele-converter but again i'm using the teleconverter to maintain that 45-megapixel resolution that doesn't necessarily mean that if i used a 1.4 times converter and compared it against a shot that i just cropped in they wouldn't be this they wouldn't be the same they might be very similar but the shot that i've cropped in would obviously have less megapixels so you're using the converter and then you can crop in on top of that as well if you need to and still retain a similar level of detail i've got some sample images and some sample video that i've shot on the z9 with this lens so i'll show you some of those sample images and some of that sample video was i also shot some stuff in 8k but i've uploaded this video in 4k rather than shooting our video in 8k [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] focusing speed for me is has been incredibly quick i've been impressed with how quickly this lens will focus whether i'm using it on a z9 whether i'm using on a z72 i've not had any major noticeable issues between those two camera bodies you would expect a 100 to 400 to focus pretty quickly it uses two focusing motors in the lens i've been more than happy with the focus performance i get out of this lens regardless of what camera body i use it on when it comes to video the 100 to 400 like other zed mount lenses doesn't exhibit any focus breathing it's actually really difficult to see any focus breathing in this lens nikon's definitely still thought about breathing they've still thought about making sure the auto focusing motors are completely silent so not only is this lens designed for stills but also designed incredibly well for video as well it's a good all-round lens for for both of those use cases if you need that longer focal length so in summary i think this lens from an optical standpoint from a picture quality standpoint i'm quite happy to say that this is one of the best zoom lenses that i've seen to stand up to the 180 to 400 in terms of picture quality but yet be significantly lower in price point it goes to show how good this lens is from a picture quality standpoint i think for most people who need a little bit of extra reach this is going to be their lens that they would go to it just makes sense for those people who need to shoot within that 100 to 400 range i do however feel like from some wildlife photographer perspectives that the 100 to 400 might be a little bit short it could definitely be worth looking at the 100 to 400 with a teleconverter and that might give you what you need but keep in mind that that then takes it to an f8 and so on so it becomes a little bit less desirable i'm currently torn as to whether or not i think this is going to be the lens that i use most or whether or not it will be the 200 to 600 or an even longer prime i think i'm going to have to wait to see when that 200 to 600 is available i'm also need to spend a lot more time with this lens because i've said i've not had it for that long either but i like it so far i love the picture quality the way that it renders is beautiful especially when using that 1.4 times teleconverter just for extra reach i've not had any problems with that but over a longer period of time especially when i know that i want to go and shoot birds or kingfishers and stuff like that i still feel like i'm going to default back to either my 600 prime because i do like that 600 millimeter focal length so there's just never a perfect lens is there so it's a really tough choice but it's definitely one of the things that i'm going to try and make videos about to make it as easy for you guys as possible when i make that decisions to whether or not this is going to be my full-time wildlife lens or not i'll definitely update you guys on that but right now with the little time that i've spent with it i'm unsure if it's going to replace my 500 5.6 or if it's going to replace my 180-400 i'm just not sure because i really like both of those lenses and i use them quite a lot so i don't know i don't know i think at the very least it could easily replace the 180 to 400 much smaller much lighter but it's a 5.6 rather than f4 so i'm definitely going to do some more tests on those and hopefully try and give you guys or show you guys the results so hopefully you found this first video the 100 to 400 useful if you've got any questions about this lens if there's anything in particular you want me to test then please do let me know in the comments below i will be putting this lens through its paces over the next couple of days over the next couple of weeks to try and get a good understanding about if i really like this lens or not right now i'm really impressed with it as a summary the picture quality is fantastic and i really need to shoot a lot more with it to get an understanding of is 400 right for me or is it a little bit too short so but for those of you that know that 100 to 400 is your focal length then trust me you're not going to be disappointed the pitch quality of this lens is absolutely fantastic as we've come to expect from all previous zed mount lenses so hopefully that first look was useful if you've got any questions let me know in the comments below and as always thank you so much for watching goodbye you

Channel: Ricci Talks

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Id: PZqJGRPuENA

Length: 19min 40sec (1180 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 28 2021