Nikon AF-S DX 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR Lens - Black

Product Information

While it works great on my Z9, I don't recommend buying this for use on full-frame because the DX Z50 and Zfc cost less and have more pixels in DX mode than any full-frame camera. Even if it doesn't take advantage of the Z9's full frame sensor, if you have a Z9, it's a fun lens and makes great pictures.

Zooming is not internal – as you can see, the front extends considerably upon zooming to 140mm. The ribbed zoom ring is sufficiently wide and neither too stiff nor too loose.

For less money, the B+W 62mm 010 is an excellent filter, as is the multicoated version and basic multicoated Hoya filters, but the Hoya HD3 is the toughest and the best. MPB puts photo and video kit into more hands, more sustainably. Every month, visual storytellers sell more than 20,000 cameras and lenses to MPB. Choose used and get affordable access to kit that doesn’t cost the earth. Focus: Focus is fast and quiet. I was a bit surprised by this, as most Nikkors with only an A/M switch use a slower, less capable focus motor. Continuous focus performance was good for a zoom with this much focal length range. I was pleased with the focus performance on all the bodies I tried it on. Everything works perfectly on every digital Nikon ever made, except that you're wasting most of your sensor with FX cameras. My only complaint is that the sample I bought did not mount or unmount well. It felt very gritty whenever I rotated it in the mount, even worse than Sigma and Tamron lenses usually feel. I'm unsure if I got a dud, or if Nikon is cheaping-out on us. Most people rarely change lenses, so I'd not worry about this. I'm used to shooting one camera with a bag full of fixed lenses and having to change lenses for every other shot; today with this lens' huge zoom range, most of us will never change lenses.

It doesn't offer the same telephoto zoom distance, but we were impressed with Sigma's sharpness, and its wider variable aperture offers slightly more light-gathering ability, for slightly less than the 18-140mm. Like that this lens has a proper metal lens mount even though I never had problems with the plastic mount on the 18-105mm. Maybe it is just a psychological thing that gives the impression of better build. Optics: Nikon's MTF chart held out a bit of hope for this lens. At the telephoto end, for example, the sagittal numbers look good, and even the meridional numbers weren't bad, with only a bit of field curvature to look out for. The wide angle end looked a bit worse overall in the MTF charts, with more suggestion that the corners would be softer. Forget the discontinued Nikon 18-135mm (67mm filters, 3.4"/86mm long, 13.5 oz./383g). It has no VR, making results at 135mm potentially shaky in all but the best light.One curiously good thing is that the telescoping front part of the lens has no play. Try to wiggle the front of the lens, and it doesn't move. This is much better than many much more expensive lenses, whose front sections often have a lot of play if you try to wiggle them. If you are actually shopping around for a lens in this category, the 18-105mm offers slightly sharper results, at the expense of zoom range, at a slightly cheaper price. If you're looking too hard, you may see some very minor yellow-blue fringes at 18mm, and some very minor green-magenta fringes at the corners at 140mm, but I doubt anyone would notice them. With a 7-blade rounded diaphragm, I almost only get 14-pointed sunstars on brilliant points of light at the smallest apertures.

It measures 73 x 90mm /2.9 x 3.5" when set to the 18mm focal length, making it one of the smaller zoom lenses currently available for Nikon's Z-series mirrorless cameras. People worry waaaaay too much about lens sharpness. It's not 1968 anymore when lenses often weren't that sharp and there could be significant differences among them; ever since about 2010 all new lenses are all pretty much equally fantastic. Zooming to 50mm results in sharpness being reduced. Clarity is still very good at maximum aperture in the centre of the frame, although the performance of this lens falls short of good towards the edges of the frame at this focal length and aperture. Stopping down improves sharpness across the frame, peaking at f/8. Here sharpness is excellent in the centre and very good towards the edges of the frame.

Coma ( saggital coma flare) often causes weird smeared blobs to appear around bright points of light in the corners of fast or wide lenses at large apertures. In lenses that have it, coma goes away as stopped down. The lens is very similar in size and weight to the 18-200mm VR. It's a little slimmer and doesn't, as yet, suffer from any zoom creep, something that has always been a pain on my 18-200mm lens. The nature of macro shots is that depth-of-field is almost nothing, so the more you can stop down, the better. I shoot my macro shots at f/32, and use studio strobes so I have enough light.