Nikon Z 28-400mm f/4-8 VR: The Best All-Purpose Lens I've Ever Used

I think all the bickering about “snobs” and whatever the opposite is comes from people doing very different photography and for some reason transferring their choices onto others and vice versa. E.g. I mostly photograph wildlife, often in dark forests, so this (28-400) lens is too slow for me. There are also prime lens purists, but in wildlife they mostly stick to birds, because good luck photographing e.g. small mammals like squirrels with that (I do follow one photographer who manages to do it, but it’s beyond my abilities). Your choices will be different still if you photograph mostly still scenes, maybe portraits etc, where your shutter speed lives in a dimension I generally don’t venture into. There is also the question of taste about how much depth of field you like, what apertures you like, how tightly you like to crop, whether you skew more towards low-key, high-key or balanced exposure etc.

I wish people were more cognisant of the diversity of photography different people do and not make universal judgements about gear or techniques in general.

I have exact lens setup. The mentioned telezoom rarely leaves my camera unless I need a portable camera that’s when the 40 shines. I have no problem with resolution since I use Z6 II.

I switched to 24-200 during workshop with Pinkhassov as he is a strong proponent of superzooms.

The rx10 is 24-200, not 600 on the long end.

I wish Sony would release a new version with updated "AI" auto focus, the new menus, and 4k60 10bit. The Mark IV is till great though as a single do it all camera.

You see that, a lot, with Japanese tourists.

American tourists tend to be waving around their phones, but Japanese tourists look like professional photojournalists.

I see a lot of tourists (not sure which nation), using portable steadycams.

It's a superzoom, regular tourism is exactly the use case for these things (and, by the look of it, something this lens does really well at!)

When I'm shooting wildlife, I'll almost always use my 100-400, maybe with a 1.4x teleconverter for even more range if I need it and the light allows it. For walkabout purposes, or indoors, I'll use either my normal zoom (24-70 f/2.8) or my wide angle (16-35 f/2.8). All of those lenses will almost certainly significantly outperform this lens at their respective niches, so you only use a lens like this if you expect to take photos of a wide variety of subjects in a wide variety of conditions, but can't/don't want to carry three (or more) lenses around with you. That pretty much describes tourists to a tee.

Some people travel primarily to take photos.

These days, those carrying a DSLR aren't doing so by accident or wannabeeism, and it's probably helping them enjoy the trip a lot more.

At least for me, it's often a nice nudge to go off the beaten path or try to find nice viewpoints, pay more attention at what I am looking at and the little details.

Cannon is probably not the best metaphor to use when talking about photography. Unless the double entendre was intentional.

Totally agree.

For walk around photography, I usually use an Olympus E-M5 with a 12-40 Pro lens. It's tiny compared to most of the Nikon and Canon offerings. That's enough zoom for most subjects, from landscape to portrait. In practice, I just haven't found the need for more zoom during regular "walk around" photography. I do have a 100-300 zoom when needed, but the added bulk of carrying around a super-zoom all the time? No thanks.

Not my space, so I didn't realize they bought Red (i.e. Red Digital Camera) ~4/2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Digital_Cinema#History

Agreed that it's nice to see them pushing forward with their camera lines. Thank god for conglomerate revenue to see them through rough patches.

Imho, the idiotic video recording limit really bit them in the ~2010s and let Cannon take a lot of their consumer/prosumer share. And is still a thing(?), maybe not on newest lines, albeit less impactful now that full-resolution makes tethered external storage a better solution. https://kagi.com/search?q=nikon+z+video+record+limit

It seemed like a missed opportunity from a technical perspective to provide a simpler warranty-voiding user toggle in software (i.e. set a bit somewhere). They'd still get to maintain the tax benefits of not "officially" being a video recorder, but it would have lessened the impact of ripping, editing, and recompiling firmware.

I own d810 and had d80 and d7100 in the past years. Their current lineup (bodies, mostly) just doesn't appeal to me - if I ever transition to mirrorless, it'd probably be Sony.

The ultimate setup was two bodies, one with the 28-75/f2.8 and one with the 80-200/f2.8

And maybe one 50mm/1.2 for those sweet bokeh shots.

But it started to get rather heavy in the end, despite the results :D

First mirrorless for me was the Fujifilm X-T5. High resolution, great design, easy and fun to use. I find editing is rarely needed with the film simulations. I started with the 16-80 f4 and it really is an excellent all rounder but for wildlife the XF150-600 can’t be beat. Light and sharp!

It may be excluded by your available budget, but the Nikon Z8 is probably the best overall camera in the world right now.

It’s a high resolution stills shooter with 20 fps! There is no mechanical shutter so it is totally silent. Eye detect, animal detect, bird, etc… all work much like with the Sony cameras.

Unlike the competition, it has a very fast sensor readout (nearly global shutter) so there is no “jelly” effect when shooting video or fast action.

The video capabilities are just crazy: 8.3K RAW at 60 fps with 12-bit color! Nobody else can do anywhere near that. Even the 4K video formats can be configured to downsample from 8K for quality directly comparable to high-end cameras used for making movies.

Every other hybrid camera “line skips”, resulting in pixelated video with a lot of noise and other artefacts.

Petapixel is largely trusted as an independent source in the photography community