Nikon Z5 Kit 24-50

[Carlito Roby]

Nikon says the 24-50mm f/4-6.3 is dust and moisture-resistant to the same standards as higher-end Nikon Z lenses. We found that claim to be accurate, never experiencing any issues with the lens even in a moderate rain as well as dusty conditions. However, the nature of this lens is that the inner barrel moves as you zoom, as shown below:

The 24-50mm f/4-6.3 has very few handling features to speak of. It has no switches, buttons, or custom controls other than the zoom and focus ring. Technically, the focus ring can be programmed to do something other than focus, like change aperture. But most photographers will want to keep it as a focus control (though some videographers may use it as an aperture control to slowly change exposure while filming).

I found that the IBIS on compatible cameras worked well enough with the Nikon Z 24-50mm to allow about 3 stops of image stabilization at the wide end and 3.5 stops at the long end. You can go a bit beyond that if you have good handholding technique and fire off a sequence of photos in a row, then select the sharpest later. Either way, this is good performance and meets expectations.

I'm Spencer Cox, a landscape photographer based in Colorado. I started writing for Photography Life a decade ago, and now I run the website in collaboration with Nasim. I've used nearly every digital camera system under the sun, but for my personal work, I love the slow-paced nature of large format film. You can see more at my personal website and my not-exactly-active Instagram page.

Optics: The Nikon Z 24-50mm f4-6.3 has 11 optical elements in 10 groups including two special dispersion elements and three aspherical elements. The Nikon 24-70/4 has 14 elements in 11 groups and has fluorine coating at the front lens to repel water, dust, and dirt and make cleaning easier. The Canon 24-50 is a 8/8 design. [+]

Aperture ring and other control elements: The multi-function control ring of the Nikon 24-50 can be assigned to operate the aperture, exposure compensation, ISO or focus. This is comparable to the Nikon 24-70 and Canon 24-50. But the Nikon 24-50 has no AF/MF switch. [+]

Sealing: There is no rubber grommet at the plastic lens mount or further weather-sealing. The Nikon 24-70 has a rubber grommet at the lens-mount plus further weather-sealing throughout the construction. [0]

To get the same angle-of-view of 70mm focal length you need to crop 1.4x into an image shot at 50mm. This would result in a reduction of resolution from e.g. 45MP to around 23MP or 24MP to 12MP if you use a Z5. Which might still be enough for the intended purpose.

Mounting the Z 24-50mm f4-6.3 on a cropped sensor body like the Nikon Z 30 results in a further reduction in angle of view equivalent to 36-75mm focal length. While this certainly provides a nice walk-around coverage Vloggers using a DX Z camera body handheld should go for a shorter focal length at the wide end like the Z DX 16-50mm f3.5-6.3 VR which also offers the benefit of image stabilization on the non-stabilized DX bodies. Another alternative might be the future Z DX 12-28mm PZ.

Focus accuracy and repeatability is critical to consistently produce sharp shots. Repeatability (the accuracy of focus on the same subject after repeated focus-acquisition) of the Nikon Z 24-50mm f4-6.3 is very good (measured 99.4% in Reikan FoCal) with no outliers over a series of 40 shots. At 50mm focal length the lens focuses in around 0.3 sec from infinity to 0.58m (1:10 magnification), which is very fast and comparable to the Z 24-70mm f4 S.

The zoom ring has a very short throw of 39 degrees between 24mm and 50mm focal length. It has a 14mm wide rubber surface with a good grip and can easily be operated with one finger. But turning the zoom ring from 24mm to retract the barrel needs more force and hardly will happen inadvertently. The lens shows no zoom creep. The focus/control ring is 8mm wide and is located closer to the camera. It has no rubberized surface but moves super smooth and can easily be operated even with your pinky.

Optically, the lens is 11 elements in 10 groups, somewhat simple for a zoom lens. The element type, positioning, shape, and size looks a very different in this lens than we typically see in a budget lens, though. There are three aspherical and two ED elements. More interestingly, this lens has its biggest element at the back of the lens: a deeply bowed piece of glass that you at first don't see when the lens is collapsed. The aspherical elements are only modestly aspherical, too, which is somewhat unusual these days. There are no special coatings on the lens, only Nikon's usual Super Integrated Coating, which we've had on all Nikkors seemingly forever.

Nikon's published MTF ratings would suggest a lens that is better on the sagittal axis than the meridional, but still quite good for a zoom lens. We'll see how that works out when we get to the performance section of this review.

The lens has a 52mm filter thread. Nikon claims that the lens was designed to "carefully consider dust and drip-resistance," but makes no further claims. No extra rubber seal is present that I can see at either end, though there is strong overlap that should reject simple ingress. The HB-98 lens hood is not supplied, and is a petal-type bayonet mount one; you can find third-party hoods that are appropriate that cost far less than Nikon's US$47 price. Inside the lens we have 7 rounded aperture blades, another simplification.

As with all Z lenses, Nikon has brought forward both the E-type design (electronically controlled aperture) and AF-P focus design (stepper motor that's fast and able to move in small increments accurately). All focus is done internally, but when you zoom the lens extends significantly forward (just over an inch at 24mm and 50mm, with 35mm being slightly less).

I should point out that this is one of those "rotate lens to use" designs. For travel and storage the lens contracts to its base 2.1" length. Rotating the zoom ring to 24mm extends the lens into shooting position and moves the front forward about an inch.

The focus ring is narrow, unmarked, and closest to the camera. As with almost all mirrorless camera lenses, the focus ring is "fly-by-wire" and isn't mechanically linked to lens element movement. The focus ring can be repurposed on Nikon Z bodies to other functions (aperture, exposure compensation, etc.).

Other than the awkward "extend to shoot" aspect of the zoom ring, this is a light, small, simple lens. The zoom ring, once the lens is extended, is a little loose but smooth on my sample. The focus ring sounds a little rougher than some of the other Z lens focus rings, but feels smooth in operation.

Sharpness: I'm a little surprised by this lens. Perhaps it's the modest 2x zoom that's helped Nikon optical engineers here, but this low cost kit lens is not as far from the best mid-range lenses as I would have expected.

Center sharpness is generally very good to excellent at 24mm. Wide open I'd put the center at very good, and you really only need to stop down to f/5.6 to hit excellent. As you move to the corners, things get a little "messier." There's blur there, but it's a fairly controlled blur (not smeared). I'd rate the corner as fair to good at f/4, improving to good at f/5.6. You really need to get to f/8 to get the best corners possible, but there's something else going on that you need to know about: the DX boundary tends to stay at just fair to good, with a very slight blur to it. Put another way, the center-to-corner sharpness falloff is not linear.

As you zoom, things change. At 28mm and 35mm, the DX boundary and corners improve with stopping down (f/5.6 is still the best aperture for center at 28mm and excellent; at 35mm, f/8 might be a bit better). Strangely, at 50mm, the situation flops: the DX boundary actually looks better to me at f/11 than the center and corner.

Note that this lens has some focus shift to it when used at close distances. Coupled with the edge performance, I'd tend to say to avoid the outer focus sensors when shooting close. The lens has some modest coma, but surprisingly little for such a low cost lens. The coma is worst at 24mm, and what I'd call minimal at 50mm. The lens does have spherical aberration at the wide end, though.

You'll note that I used the word "blur" a few times in my description here. I didn't write "smudged" or "smeared." There's a big difference to me. I can tolerate small blur, as blur simply looks like a slight focus miss (and that may be the case in such a small lens with so much aspherical correction). But smudge and smear look wrong to our eyes and tend to call attention to themselves. Worse still, no "sharpening" tool is going to get rid of that smudge or smear, and can sometimes make them look worse.

So, overall I'm reasonably happy with the optical performance of this lens. While it isn't exceptional, most people are going to be comfortable with the results they see from this lens, and at pretty much any focal length and aperture. I've seen a lot of kit lenses in my career, and this one is more towards the top of the heap.

Chromatic Aberration: As you might expect from a slower-aperture zoom, longitudinal CA is pretty minimal, and I just ignore it. Lateral CA is clearly present, but almost perfectly removed by the in-camera (or post processing) corrections.

Linear Distortion: As with almost all Nikkor Z lenses, corrections can't be turned off in camera. Uncorrected, at 24mm the lens is producing modest barrel distortion, but with a wavy mustache, particularly as you near the corners. While the total amount of distortion isn't as high as you might expect from a budget lens, you'll still want to correct this if you've got any straight lines in your image. Distortion turns from barrel to pincushion somewhere between 28mm and 35mm. The distortion at 28mm is minimal enough to usually ignore, but already at 35mm the pincushion is obvious enough that straight lines will need correction. By the time we get to 50mm, the lens has about as much pincushion distortion as I've ever seen. Surprisingly, Nikon's distortion corrections don't seem to fully correct the issues: I still see some small barrel distortion at 24mm and a bit of pincushion at 50mm.

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