Rodney Campbell's Blog

I’d previously tested the new Nikon Z 24-200 lens with the type of long distance landscape and outdoor subject material one might encounter when travelling. In short it appeared excellent across nearly all focal lengths with a slight weakness at the extreme edges at the shorter (24mm) end

Another typical use case for a lens like this when travelling, day tripping out and about or doing street photography is nice tight crop portraits

It was a nice fully overcast day so I figured I’d see how the lens operates for this portrait use case

This is one aspect of where the near zero focus breathing and very close minimum focus distance (~0.5m) of this lens is fantastic

I suspect I may not have done this well with either my 28-300 (the focus breathing at close distance is rediculous – it ends up being way lass than a 200mm effective focal length at this distance). Perhaps not even with my 70-200 (can’t shoot anywhere near this close as the MFD is around 1.5m)

In this case I have the additional challenge of trying to take portraits of our new puppy. He’s not particularly amenable to staying still to have his photo taken :). So here’s me chasing him around my back yard trying to stay in close :). I shot at 1/400th sec @ 200mm to try and help deal with most of the motion and using Animal Detection autofocus is an absolute godsend 🙂

and here is a 100% crop from the image

One concern I had was the relatively limited f/6.3 aperture and the limits that would have on both available light and the ability to control depth of field. I’m a fan of being able to throw out the background and have a nice soft bokeh blur. This is something that is glorious with say the 70-200/2.8 or faster longer primes like the 85/1.4 or 1.8

I was pleasantly surprised with what the 200mm end of the 24-200 @ f/6.3 can do

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger. To see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer click any of the images.