Nikon Z 400mm f/4.5 VR S Review

Focus Speed and Accuracy

Focusing on this lens isn’t based on a “Silky Swift” motor like you’d find in Nikon’s Z 400mm f/2.8 and 600mm f/4. Even so, the comparatively weaker stepping motor focuses extremely well on this lens, probably because there isn’t much heavy glass inside the lens to move quickly. The lens can focus in a heartbeat.

Focus accuracy is high, too. I would say that under standard lighting conditions, this lens is comparable to the significantly more expensive Nikon Z 400mm f/2.8 TC VR S in terms of focusing.

That said, when the focusing distance is very close to its limit (which is 2.5m), the AF reliability starts to decline a bit. Most telephoto lenses will struggle in such conditions, and it’s not that the 400mm f/4.5 S is worse than alternatives here – but it’s something to keep in mind if you photograph smaller, closer subjects.

For anything else, including a fast-moving bird like the one below, focusing with this lens is faster than my eye can detect.

Distortion

There is almost no distortion on the Nikon Z 400mm f/4.5 VR S, not that most users of this lens will be photographing subjects where distortion is a concern anyway. Here’s the full chart of distortion levels for the bare lens and with both of Nikon’s teleconverters:

This is so negligible as to not worry about whatsoever.

Vignetting

As with most of Nikon’s telephoto lenses, vignetting is not an issue on the Nikon Z 400mm f/4.5, with or without teleconverters. Here’s how we measured it:

The levels are already negligible at 400mm and f/4.5. From there, they only get better as you stop down, focus more closely, or use a teleconverter.

Lateral Chromatic Aberration

On the bare lens, the Nikon Z 400mm f/4.5 VR S has relatively low chromatic aberration – enough that you will rarely see it in real-world photos. However, with the Nikon Z teleconverters (especially Nikon’s 2x TC), the levels are actually quite high. Here’s how we measured it in the lab:

Post-processing corrections will be enough to eliminate lateral chromatic aberration if you’re shooting with the bare lens at 400mm. However, if you’re using either teleconverter, there may be cases where chromatic aberration corrections do not fully fix the problem. This is especially true when using the Nikon Z 2.0x TC, where lateral CA is about as high as we’ve ever seen in our lab.

Sharpness

The Nikon Z 400mm f/4.5 VR S is a very sharp lens, in line with similar lenses like the Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 and the Nikon AF-S 500mm f/5.6 PF. Here’s how we measured it in the lab:

The only negative here is that the sharpest aperture is not wide-open at f/4.5, but stopped down to f/5.6 through f/8. I know that some photographers were hoping this was one of those “sharpest wide open” kinds of telephoto lenses, but even though that isn’t the case on the 400mm f/4.5, it is still nice and sharp at f/4.5. You just can make things even a bit crisper by stopping down.

Here’s a real-world example of the lens’s high sharpness, starting from a photo of a Sapphire-vented Puffleg:

The hummingbird is far from the only animal in the photograph. I didn’t notice that I had captured an entire small ecosystem until I zoomed in 100%. Do you see it too? There are tiny mites on the hummingbird’s beak:

What about if you use a teleconverter? While the Nikon Z 400mm f/4.5 pairs pretty well with the 1.4x teleconverter, it is pretty iffy with the 2x teleconverter (a bit worse than I had hoped, actually, which is one of the only downsides to this lens’s sharpness). Here are those charts:

The lens is totally usable with the 1.4x teleconverter. It’s not as sharp as a native prime lens would be (you’ll see that on the next page of this review), but it’s about at the level of the Nikon Z 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 at the 600mm focal length – which is to say, a solid performer.

As for Nikon’s 2x teleconverter, it really isn’t a combination that I would recommend. While it may work in a pinch, you’ll notice that the sharpest aperture on it is f/16! The performance wide open at f/9 is pretty weak (and f/9 is not a very bright maximum aperture anyway).

In short, it’s a very sharp lens, even though some photographers may have hoped the wide-open sharpness would beat the f/5.6 sharpness – and that it wasn’t quite as weak with the 2x TC.

Flare and Backlight Performance

Flare is another area where the Nikon Z 400mm f/4.5 does well, despite the lack of ARNEO coatings. I admit that I don’t shoot in strong backlight with telephotos very often, but occasionally the opportunity arises – for example, the photo below of the Rufous-booted Racket-tail in the eastern Andes. Pleasingly, the backlight causes neither flare nor a loss of contrast in the image:

Bokeh

Next we have the question of bokeh. This parameter is impossible to find objective criteria for. So – purely subjectively – the bokeh of the 400mm f4.5 is very pleasing. This is true both in normal situations and in backlit conditions with specular highlights (which tend to strain a lens’s background blur a bit more).

Even when there are bright, out-of-focus points of light in your photo, this lens blurs them well. There aren’t many visible artifacts, with just a tiny hint of defined edges. This is one reason why I’m glad that Nikon didn’t go with a phase-fresnel optical design on the 400mm f/4.5 S. Although a PF element may have reduced the lens’s weight even further, PF lenses sometimes have more nervous bokeh (although there are exceptions).

In any case, the 400mm f/4.5 S blows out backgrounds like a charm – and the 9-blade rounded aperture helps the background look good even when you’re stopped down beyond maximum aperture.

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”: