Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 VR S Review

Focusing

I had the opportunity to test the Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 in a variety of situations, including focusing in low light, birds in flight, and at the edge of the minimum focusing distance. How did it perform in these situations? Mostly excellent, but if you are expecting dramatic improvements over the 180-600mm, read on. After all, every coin has two sides.

Before we get into my impressions of the autofocus, I should point out that I tested the lens on Nikon’s most capable camera in terms of focusing, the Z9. Before testing, I updated the firmware to the latest version, which opened up a new feature in the AF subject detection options – birds. By doing so, I could ensure that the camera itself would not be the cause of any slow focusing issues! In the lab, we additionally tested the 600mm f/6.3’s focus speed on the Nikon Z7 side by side against the 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3.

It probably won’t surprise anyone when I write that autofocusing on perched birds was a breeze with the Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3. Even focusing in low light levels was a breeze. And that’s how it should be. When you are taking pictures, you should be concentrating on what you are shooting, not with what you are shooting.

I had a very similar feeling when photographing birds in flight. The combination accurately focused regardless of the bird, including birds with such bizarre appearances as a Spoonbill or a Pelican. It was all correctly focused on the eye. The depth of field was paper-thin at this point, and the speed of the birds was quite high, so I give a lot of credit to both the lens and the Nikon Z9.

My takeaway was that the combination of light weight and fast autofocus makes the 600mm f/6.3 a great tool for handheld photography of fast-moving subjects. The question is, is the prime lens significantly ahead of the zoom in this regard?

In the lab, we measured the Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 to focus about 10% faster than the Nikon Z 180-600mm f/6.3 – a small difference that we were able to replicate consistently. The same 10% difference was also present when using the teleconverters and when shooting in low light. This meant that if the Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 could autofocus in 1.0 seconds, the 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 would lock onto the same target in roughly 1.1 seconds.

This isn’t a major difference, of course – not enough that I have any concerns using the 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3, even though I have a slight preference for the 600mm f/6.3.

A bigger factor with both lenses is the relatively narrow maximum aperture of f/6.3. This can make it difficult to photograph birds in flight in low light conditions, and I would certainly prefer an f/4.5, f/4, or f/2.8 lens in such conditions. In the field, both lenses started running into focusing issues at about the same point in the evening, when my ISO was creeping past 6400.

Where you really run into a big difference between the 600mm f/6.3 and the 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 is in the minimum focusing distance. While the prime can focus on something 4 meters away (about 13 feet), the zoom lets you focus more closely. The subject can be as close as 2.4m at the 600mm focal length (about 8 feet). In the case of shy, wild birds, 4m probably won’t limit you, but there are a number of exceptions where 4m is simply not close enough. In that case, the zoom lens takes the win.

Distortion

Distortion is essentially irrelevant on lenses like this, but for the sake of completeness, we tested it in the lab as usual. The Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 has extremely minimal distortion both as a bare lens and with the two Nikon Z teleconverters:

Chromatic Aberration

The Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 VR S has low lateral chromatic aberration (around 1 pixel) as a bare lens. The lens also handles Nikon’s teleconverters very well, with chromatic aberration staying under 2 pixels even with the 2.0x TC. This is unusually good performance.

Vignetting

There is negligible vignetting on the Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 VR S at every focusing distance and aperture. This holds true when using the teleconverters. It’s a nearly perfect performance:

Sharpness

Now for the moment that many photographers have been waiting for! How sharp is the Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 VR S? Take a look for yourself:

This is excellent performance. It’s among the highest we’ve ever seen at f/6.3. The only reason that some lenses show sharper results than this (with a few even crossing 4000 LW/PH in our tests) is that the maximum aperture of f/6.3 is already slightly impacted by diffraction. If that’s the worst we can say about the 600mm f/6.3’s sharpness, it’s a fantastic result – the lens is essentially diffraction-limited and is sharpest at its maximum aperture.

What about with a teleconverter? Here’s our test from the Nikon Z 1.4x TC:

As you can see, the Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 works extremely well with the 1.4x teleconverter (at least where sharpness is concerned). As long as you don’t mind the f/9 maximum aperture, there is nothing in the chart above to dissuade me from recommending this combination.

Here’s how it measures with Nikon’s 2.0x teleconverter:

This time, the sharpness performance certainly takes a hit, although a large part of that is diffraction at f/13. Note how the f/16 performance is not too much worse than it was on the bare lens. That said, this test was mostly just academic, because a 1200mm lens with a maximum aperture of f/13 is not practical in most situations.

Bokeh

Besides the sharpness of my in-focus subject, I was also interested in the out-of-focus parts of the image. After all, the bokeh of telephoto lenses and their ability to suppress unwanted distractions in the background is one of the reasons why people buy them.

Although lenses with a PF element are said to be prone to issues with bokeh, I have to admit that I have rarely noticed the problem in practice – not with the 600mm f/6.3 or with any of Nikon’s other PF lenses. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen sample photos where people show the difference, but in real-world use, those situations arise very rarely.

Subjectively, the bokeh of the 600mm f/6.3 lens is on a very good level. As you can see through the sample photos in this article, backgrounds are smooth and rarely distracting. I leave the examples below for you to judge for yourself, however.

If you want an even softer rendering of the out-of-focus regions, you’ll have to go for the 600mm f/4 or the 400mm f/2.8 and shoot them wide open. Aperture, focal length, and subject distance are the biggest determinations of how your out-of-focus background will look.

Backlighting

The Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 S does not have any issues with flare, ghosting, or loss of contrast when shooting into bright light. While all supertelephoto lenses will have issues if the bright sun is directly in the frame, the Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 S handles this situation better than most. I had no issue with bright sunlight or artificial lights when using this lens.

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”: