Nikon Z DX 12-28mm f/3.5-5.6 PZ VR Review

Focusing Characteristics

The Nikon Z DX 12-28mm f/3.5-5.6 autofocuses quickly, accurately, and almost silently. If anything, it’s a little too quiet for my tastes! Pairing the ultra-wide focal length with a nearly silent focus motor makes it hard to tell sometimes if the lens has really focused or not. But on balance, it’s definitely a good thing that it’s so quiet, especially for videographers who are using an on-camera shotgun mic. (Zooming is also essentially silent, except a small noise when zooming very quickly.)

Because of the relatively dim maximum aperture, the Nikon Z DX 12-28mm f/3.5-5.6 cannot focus in dark conditions as easily as a brighter lens like the Nikon Z DX 24mm f/1.7. And the lens’s focus speed does slow down some in low light. It’s not a major issue, but you’ll want to be aware of how to engage manual focus if you’re doing something like blue hour landscape photography.

Lastly, the close-focusing capabilities of this lens aren’t horrible, with a maximum magnification of 0.21× (or 1:4.8 magnification). While this certainly isn’t macro photography territory, you will at least be able to take some reasonably close photos as long as your subject isn’t too small.

Distortion

The Nikon Z DX 12-28mm f/3.5-5.6 PZ has a very high amount of distortion, even for an ultra-wide zoom. The performance at 12mm is especially egregious – it’s not quite fisheye territory, but getting close. Here’s a graph of the distortion we measure on uncorrected images:

Again, though, this is only what appears in uncorrected images. Most of the time when using this lens, you won’t see any distortion at all. That’s because Nikon not only applies an automatic built-in distortion profile with this lens (so you’re always seeing a corrected image on the camera’s LCD), but some software including Adobe Lightroom applies the distortion correction automatically. In fact, in Lightroom specifically, you can’t even remove the corrections if you wanted to. (Shame on Nikon and Adobe for that.)

Some photographers wonder if distortion is a relevant problem in the first place these days, given how easily it can be corrected in post-processing. And it’s true that I’d prefer high distortion over some other image quality flaws, such as a blurry lens. However, when the photo has as much distortion as you’ll get with this lens, there can be some problems. You’ll inevitably lose a bit of sharpness when the post-processing software stretches and upsamples the image back into place, especially in the corners. It can magnify any existing sharpness issues in the image, too, such as a slightly out-of-focus foreground or unsharpness from your choice of aperture.

Considering this, I wouldn’t give the Nikon Z DX 12-28mm f/3.5-5.6 PZ high marks where distortion is concerned, although you can take plenty of consolation in the fact that it is one of the more easily correctable image quality flaws.

For reference, here’s a simulation of -8.13% distortion:

Vignetting

In uncorrected images, the Nikon Z DX 12-28mm f/3.5-5.6 PZ has relatively high levels of vignetting, although it depends greatly on your focal length and aperture. It’s worst at 12mm, f/3.5, and far focus distances. Here are two charts showing the vignetting levels:

The maximum of 2.45 stops is fairly high, although thankfully the lens quickly improves as you zoom in or stop down. At the usual landscape photography apertures of f/5.6, f/8, and f/11, you will not see very much vignetting on this lens even at 12mm. So, I would rate its vignetting performance as very dependent upon how you’re shooting. The vignetting could be a problem for something like Milky Way photography (where you’ll likely be at 12mm, f/3.5, and infinity focus). But it would be pretty irrelevant if you’re shooting stopped down or at the longer focal lengths.

Vignetting is another one of those image quality flaws that seems easy to correct, but can lead to some problems if you aren’t careful. If you fully recover almost 2.5 stops of vignetting in the far corners, you will reveal some image noise in those portions of the photo, especially in shadow areas. You may choose to leave some of the vignetting there for artistic effect and/or less noise, but it’s not an irrelevant concern.

Keep in mind that Nikon’s post-processing software and Adobe Lightroom directly read information from your in-camera 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 raw .NEF files. Although you can always add or remove more vignetting manually, I recommend turning the in-camera corrections to “Medium” or “High” to minimize your post-production work.

Lateral Chromatic Aberration

There is a low amount of lateral chromatic aberration on the Nikon Z 12-28mm f/3.5-5.6 PZ. It’s better than a lot of ultra-wide zooms, including some that are much higher-end. 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. The Nikon Z DX 12-28mm f/3.5-5.6 PZ only crosses this threshold at 12mm, and even then, it’s still on the low side. This level of vignetting is low enough that you can easily fix it with chromatic aberration corrections and not have any lingering artifacts left behind.

Sharpness

The moment you’ve all been waiting for! How sharp is the Nikon Z DX 12-28mm f/3.5-5.6 PZ VR? Surprisingly good, I’d say. Here’s how it performs across the focal length range:

You can see from these charts that the performance is really nice and consistent regardless of your aperture or focal length. The lens does get a little weaker at 28mm, and the corners are a hair less sharp at 12mm, but it’s never bad by any means. Of course, the numbers decrease as you stop down to f/11 or f/16 due to diffraction, but that’s true of all lenses.

Something really nice about the Z DX 12-28mm f/3.5-5.6 PZ is that you can shoot at the maximum aperture at any focal length without any concerns. I would still personally stop down to f/5.6, f/8, or even f/11 if you’re shooting from a tripod (given that depth of field is usually the biggest cause of blurry corners in photography). But from a lens sharpness standpoint, anywhere on this lens is fair game.

These numbers will get a little more context on the following page of this review, where I’ve compared the sharpness of this lens against other lenses that you might be considering. However, the bottom line is that the DX 12-28mm f/3.5-5.6 PZ is surprisingly good where sharpness is concerned, especially considering that it’s targeted as a budget optic.

Keep in mind that the numbers in the charts above are only directly comparable to Photography Life’s measurements of other Nikon DX lenses. However, you can still compare them to our FX lens reviews if you make a few small adjustments. On the FX lens in question, look only at the “center” and “mid” values, and divide those values by 1.5. Doing so will tell you how the FX lens would measure if tested on a Nikon DX camera, and can be compared directly to the center and corner numbers above.

Sunstars and Flare

Wide angle zooms, especially inexpensive ones, typically have a pretty high amount of lens flare when pointing at the sun. The Nikon Z DX 12-28mm f/3.5-5.6 PZ is no exception, although it performed better than I had expected in this regard. It’s possible to go out of your way to get more flare, but a typical example looks like this:

I apologize for the clouds in the photo; I had really bad luck getting perfectly blue skies in my time with this lens. But the flare in the photo above is pretty reasonable to me. There’s a single well-defined dot pretty close to the sun (relatively easy to clone out if needed) and a fainter but larger set of reflections just past it. While this isn’t a totally flare-free performance, it’s pretty good for a $360 ultra-wide zoom.

As for sunstars, the 7-blade aperture diaphragm on this lens renders large, moderately well-defined sunstars. They’re clearest at f/11 and f/16, although you’ll still see them to a lesser extent at wider apertures.

Note that I didn’t clone out any flare in the photo above, either. As long as your front and rear lens elements are clean, the flare performance is not too shabby.

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”: