Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 Review

Focusing Characteristics

The Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 autofocuses quietly and very accurately, even at f/1.4. This is not a surprise given the impressive focusing accuracy of the Nikon Z system – and it is as much due to the camera as the lens – but it’s still great to see the trend continue on the Z 35mm f/1.4. That said, the lens clearly focuses more slowly than some Nikon Z glass, including the Z 35mm f/1.8 S. I would call it “reasonably fast” rather than “quick” or “instantaneous.” Though it’s still plenty fast enough for the vast majority of situations.

Because of the f/1.4 maximum aperture, the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 focuses in very dark conditions without issue. Even compared to an aperture of f/1.8, an aperture of f/1.4 is 0.67 stops brighter. This makes the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 an ideal choice for low-light photography. If you were using an f/2.8 or f/4 lens instead, you would need 4x or 8x as much light respectively.

Finally, the close-focusing capabilities of the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 are respectable. You can reach up to 1:5.6 with this lens (0.18× magnification), which allows you to comfortably fill the frame with subjects like large flowers. True macro photography is out of this lens’s reach, however, and you’d be better suited with something like the Nikon Z MC 50mm f/2.8 instead.

Distortion

Most of the time, even cheap prime lenses tend to have minimal distortion as long as they aren’t ultra-wides. However, the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 is an exception. In my tests, I measure an unusually high -4.97% barrel distortion in uncorrected raw files. By comparison, the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.8 S has just -1.21% barrel distortion, a much more typical measurement for a 35mm prime.

For reference, here’s a simulation of -4.97% distortion:

The good news is that distortion is one of the least obtrusive image quality problems that you can run into. It’s easy to correct distortion in most post-processing software with minimal side effects (and a lot of software does it automatically). Granted, distortion of this level can potentially lead to slightly weaker corners once they’re stretched back into place. But when all’s said and done, even relatively high distortion is not something that I would worry about too much these days.

Vignetting

In uncorrected images, the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 has pretty good vignetting performance, especially considering that it’s an f/1.4 lens. You’ll see the most vignetting at f/1.4 and infinity focus. Here’s the full chart as measured from raw files in the lab:

I was a little worried that Nikon was going to compromise on vignetting performance with this lens, but thankfully, that’s not the case. The maximum of 2.16 stops isn’t exactly low, but for a 35mm f/1.4 lens, it’s pretty typical. And stopping down or focusing very closely will get the vignetting down to negligible levels before long.

Keep in mind that Adobe Lightroom’s lens profiles for the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 directly read information from your camera’s vignetting reduction setting. If you want your photos from this lens to have full corrections by default, you need to turn the vignetting correction to “High” in-camera. This is true even if you’re shooting .NEF files. It’s not a big deal (you can always remove excess vignetting manually), but I recommend turning the in-camera corrections to “Medium” or “High” to minimize your post-production work.

Lateral Chromatic Aberration

There is a modest amount of lateral chromatic aberration on the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 – not enough to worry about most of the time, but a little higher than we saw on the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.8 S. Here’s the chart:

Anything under about one pixel is almost impossible to notice in real-world images, even with chromatic aberration corrections turned off. By comparison, the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 maxes out at 1.54 pixels. It’s not best in class, but you won’t find yourself constantly needing to fix lateral CA on this lens. Even when it does appear, the automatic corrections in your post-processing software should take care of it without any lingering artifacts.

Sharpness

The moment you’ve all been waiting for! How sharp is the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4? Is it clearly worse than the Z 35mm f/1.8 S? Here’s what I measure in the lab:

Not bad at all! The maximum aperture of f/1.4 is definitely weaker (and so is f/16 due to the usual effects of diffraction). But every aperture on this lens is completely usable, and it’s downright sharp from f/2.8 on. I’m getting ahead of myself a little – there will be more info on the next page of this review – but this is clearly a better performance than the Nikon AF-S 35mm f/1.4G, and even looks all right against the higher-end Nikon Z 35mm f/1.8 S.

Coma

Related to sharpness is coma, a lens aberration that can make dots of light in the corner of a photo look like smears. Coma isn’t usually visible in everyday photography, but for something like Milky Way photography, it can be a factor. The Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 is a little long for Milky Way photography, but the aperture is bright enough to make it possible. So, I wanted to put its coma performance to the test.

The crop shown in this section is a 900 × 1350 pixel excerpt from the top left corner of the Nikon Z7’s 45 megapixel sensor. I didn’t do any resampling or sharpening, and only mild color noise reduction. Here’s the full image followed by the 100% crop:

There is some significant coma in this photo. Sure, I’ve seen worse – the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 still works for star photography in a pinch. But if you want a Milky Way lens on a budget, you’d be better off something like the Nikon Z 20mm f/1.8 S, the Viltrox 16mm f/1.8, or the Nikon Z 17-28mm f/2.8.

Bokeh

Bokeh is another word for the qualities of the background blur in a photo. “Good” bokeh is subjective, since different photographers have their own preferences for how the background blur looks. That said, photographers commonly want their background blur to be soft, not distracting. Out-of-focus highlights that are round, uniform, and soft-edged are usually considered favorable.

Even though 35mm lenses are a little wide to give ultra-blurry backgrounds, the f/1.4 maximum aperture of this lens tells a different story. Focus on something relatively close, open the lens up to maximum aperture, and enjoy some serious out-of-focus blur. But is it good bokeh or bad? Here are some examples to help you decide:

There’s definitely “bubble bokeh” in some of these images, and that leads to some slightly busy backgrounds. It definitely isn’t the creamy texture that some photographers covet – although I actually like that it has some personality and is a little unconventional. Of course, this is all subjective, and you might love it or hate it.

Finally, I’ve seen some reviews of the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 that are pretty negative about the level of longitudinal chromatic aberration in out-of-focus areas (AKA color fringing). I don’t really have the same negative reaction. Yes, there’s some LoCA – it’s clearly visible in some of the images above, especially the photo of the guy walking down the street. But this isn’t uncommon for a fast prime lens.

Flare

I was curious to test how the Nikon Z 35mm f/1.4 handled having the sun in the frame. Surprisingly, Nikon doesn’t seem to specify publicly any sort of anti-flare coating on this lens. That’s a bit of a red flag where flare, ghosting, and contrast are concerned. I know that there are some coatings (you can see that simply by shining a light on the front element of the lens) but they definitely aren’t Nikon’s highest-end ones.

As you can see, contrast is retained reasonably well, but there’s some pretty significant flare. This definitely wouldn’t be the lens to choose if you shoot into the sun a lot.

That said, I didn’t find flare to be omnipresent when I used this lens, only when pointing directly into the sun. You can see from the photo below that reflected sunlight isn’t enough to trigger the flare.

The next page of this review dives into the sharpness numbers a bit more, with some comparisons against other lenses that Nikon users may be considering. So, click the menu below to go to “Lens Comparisons”: