Introduction
By now I have used more than 260 lenses. Interestingly there has never been a 24-70mm 2.8 midrange zoom among those, even though they are really popular, there are a lot of them and pretty much any manufacturer made at least one. In my pursuit of assembling a set of affordable autofocus lenses with nice imaging characteristics, it is now finally time to change that. So let’s have a closer look at this Nikon AF-S 24-70mm 2.8G IF ED N.
Sample Images
You can find most of the sample pictures in full resolution here.
Contents
Specifications / Version History
The history of Nikon’s f/2.8 midrange zooms started in 1987 with the Nikon AF 35-70mm 2.8. Twelve years later the Nikon AF-S 28-70mm 2.8D was released and in 2007 this Nikon AF-S 24-70mm 2.8G IF ED N followed. In August 2015 it had been replaced by the Nikon AF-S 24-70mm 2.8E ED VR, incorporating an in-lens stabilizer.
This is a review of the first generation Nikon AF-S 24-70mm 2.8G IF ED N, which has the following specifications:
- Diameter: 83 mm
- Field of view: 34°20’ to 84° (diagonally)
- Length: 133 mm (at 50mm setting)
- Weight: 917g (without hood, caps, tripod foot)
- Filter Diameter: 77 mm
- Number of Aperture Blades: 9 (rounded)
- Elements/Groups: 15/11
- Close Focusing Distance: 0.38 m
- Maximum Magnification: 1:3.4 at 70mm (measured)
- Mount: F-mount
buy from ebay.com | ebay.de | B&H (affiliate links) starting at $450/450€
Handling / Build Quality
These f/2.8 zooms have been specifically designed to withstand years of professional (ab)use and this one is not exception. It feels solid, everything is where you would expect it to be and it just works.
The focus ring is situated at the front of the lens. It is mechanically coupled and rotates 70° from the minimum focus distance of 0.38 m to infinity. The resistance of the focus ring is a bit on the soft side, but there is no slack when changing the orientation of rotation.
The zoom ring is situated closer to the camera and has markings for 70, 50, 35, 28 and 24 mm. This sample does not show any zoom creep, but maybe those that have been used more do. This is also not a parfocal zoom, if you change the focal length, focus needs to be adjusted.
On the left side of the lens the AF/MF switch is located. As said before the focus ring is mechanically coupled to the internal mechanics, so we also got a distance scale. Unlike the Nikon AF-S 70-200mm 2.8G VRI this lens does not feature lens buttons.
The lens shipped with a pretty bulky hood. Using it has another benefit though: this is an internal focus (IF), but not an internal zoom lens, so when changing the focal length the inner cam moves back and forth. Therefore it is not the greatest idea to put the lens upside down (at least when not set at its shortest 50mm setting). With the hood that is nothing to worry about, as it is attached to the fixed part of the lens barrel.
Many zooms are shortest at their widest setting and become longer at their tele end. This lens features a more complex design though: it is shortest at the 50mm setting, longest at 24mm and somewhere inbetween at the 70mm setting.
This is by no means a small lens, but if it can replace two to three primes for you, it is not that big either.
There are also some analgoue cameras that fully support this lens. The cheapest is the Nikon F80, but also the F100, F5 and F6 can make full use of this lens and support the autofocus and allow you to change the aperture – this is not the case for all the manual focus SLRs and also the older autofocus SLRs though.
Autofocus
I am not shooting sports or fast moving animals/humans so if you want to know if the lens is fast enough for this, or how it compares to other lenses in this segment, you may have to look for a different review with a more detailed assessment of this aspect.
All of Nikon’s f/2.8 zooms are widely known for their fast AF speed. This still holds true when adapting this lens via a Monster LA-FE1/2 adapter to a Sony camera and of course also when adapting it via the FTZ adapter to Nikon Z-mount cameras.
Vignetting
Light Falloff
| 24mm | 35mm | 50mm | 70mm | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| f/2.8 | 2.5 EV | 2.0 EV | 1.9 EV | 2.0 EV |
| f/4.0 | 1.8 EV | 1.1 EV | 0.9 EV | 1.1 EV |
| f/5.6 | 1.1 EV | 0.5 EV | 0.4 EV | 0.4 EV |
| f/8.0 | 1.0 EV | 0.4 EV | 0.3 EV | 0.1 EV |
| f/11 | 1.0 EV | 0.4 EV | 0.3 EV | 0 EV |
Many of the recent mirrorless designs show high vignetting figures – a compromise to reduce their size. So the values of around 2 EV at the maximum aperture and almost none stopped down (except for the 24mm end) we see here actually look pretty decent. For pictures taken at the 70mm end I even often felt the need to add a vignette in post.
It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.
Optical vignetting
Fast lenses usually show a noticeable amount of optical vignetting. Without going too much into technical details optical vignetting leads to the truncation of light circles towards the borders of the frame.
In the center of the frame almost every lens will render a perfect circle, but only lenses with very low optical vignetting will keep this shape in the corners.
So in the following comparison we move from the center (left) to the extreme corner (right) and see how the shape of the light circle changes.
This is a typical performance for a fast standard zoom, at the wide and long ends the light points in the corners take on rather weird shapes though.
This Nikon lens also makes use of a large diameter PGM (precision glass mold) aspherical element and we can clearly see the onion rings in out of focus highlights caused by it here. As this is only an f/2.8 lens you will only rarely encounter them in the field though.
Sharpness
MTF-Graphs
At the time this lens was released having a range from 24mm to 70mm in an f/2.8 zoom was a pretty big deal, so some compromises had to be made.
Looking at these MTF graphs we see a significant drop in performance at the 24mm end in the corners – at least at f/2.8.
At the 70mm end we also see something interesting, the peaks of resolution (blue lines) and contrast (red lines) do not seem to occur in the same focal plane, as the resolution is higher in the midframe than in the center – which shouldn’t really be the case.
Most MTF-Graphs show calculated values that do not take into account manufacturing tolerances and sample variation. Furthermore they are usually calculated for infinity, so in the field and shooting at different distances a noticeable variation may be visible.
The general consensus on this lens also seems to be that it is a bit weak at the 70mm end, especially at infinity. So let’s put these calculated graphs aside and have a look at this lens’ actual performance ourselves.
Focus Shift
A maximum magnification of 1:3.4 at the 70mm end is pretty good, as it even allows for macro like pictures. The depth of field is so shallow here that it should easily reveal any focus shift issues.
When having a close look the depth of field does seem to extend a bit more towards the back than the front, but the actual subject does not drop out of the focal plane so this should not be an issue in the field.
infinity (42mp Sony A7rII)
In the center the lens looks great from f/2.8 at all focal lengths. At 24mm and 50mm I see a midzone dip at wider apertures and the corners at 70mm never look really great.
For best across frame sharpness I would use f/8.0 to f/11 at 24mm, f/5.6 to f/8.0 at 35mm, f/8.0 at 50mm and f/11 at 70mm.
Keep in mind there is more variance with these zoom lenses compared to primes, so your sample of this lens might behave slightly different.
portrait distance (30x FL, 42mp Sony A7rII)
For portraiture it isn’t so important how flat the field is, it is more interesting to see what the sharpness is like when focused at different parts of the frame to take field curvature out of the equation.
This is what I did here, I refocused for every shot and aperture to get the best possible result at different locations in the frame (center, inner midframe and outer midframe).
Focus distance was 30 times the current focal length and the circle of the dollar bill is more or less the size of a human eye.
Center | Inner Midframe | Outer Midframe
Also here the lens looks really good in the center at all focal lengths. Off center it is generally strongest at the 24mm end and weakest at 50mm.
To put this performance into perspective I need to review a few more of these standard zooms.
close (0.38 m, 1:3.3, 42mp Sony A7rII)
The good news are that this lens features a really nice maximum magnification at the 70mm end. It is a bit soft at f/2.8 though, so I would stop down to f/4.0 or better f/5.6 for that close up ring shot.
Distortion
The distortion patterns of this lens are also interesting. At 24mm we see strong barrel distortion, close to 35mm very low pincushion distortion, then strong pincushion distortion at 50mm and weaker pincushion distortion at 70mm.
As you can see the Lightroom profile does a pretty good job at correcting this. I was using the lens via the Monster Adapter here and had to pick the correct lens from the drop down menu, but Lightroom automatically applied the appropriate correction for the chosen focal length.
Sunstars
24mm
70mm
Nice sunstar rendering wasn’t really high on the priority list for this lens. The alignment of the aperture blades isn’t great to begin with, so it is hard to create sunstars at all. If you still manage to do they don’t look particularly nice due to rays with uneven length and spacing.
As this is a highly subjective topic may have a look at this article to see which kind of sunstars you prefer.
Coma correction
24mm
70mm
The coma correction is actually pretty decent, at the wide as well as at the long end, but especially at the long end the corner performance isn’t great to begin with. Still, if you are forced to take a blue hour picture at f/2.8 it won’t be ruined by huge coma artefacts.
Bokeh
A maximum aperture of f/2.8 in the 24-70mm range doesn’t allow for a very shallow depth of field in most situations, but at the 70mm setting it is still sufficient for creating half body portraits with appealing out of focus backgrounds.
At shorter focal length settings and/or at longer focus distances it is only possible to create slightly defocused backgrounds though.
So this Nikon AF-S 24-70mm 2.8G zoom lens will not win any bokeh competition with faster primes, but in all the situations I threw at it it created appealing und undistracting out of focus backgrounds.
I also think it performs better in this category than many competitors like e.g. the first generation Tamron 28-75mm 2.8 for mirrorless cameras, which in some scenarios creates so distracting backgrounds, it is hard to keep the eyes on the actual subject.
Flare resistance
This was one of the earlier lenses with Nikon’s Nano crystal coat. Generally I found the performance in this category to be quite good.
At the 24mm setting it is possible to create some artefacts – especially stopped down.
At the long end this is less of an issue. I had to push the lens hard to show the faint ghost you see above.
The performance looks better than what I have seen from the Tamron 28-75mm 2.8 designed for mirrorless cameras, but many higher end f/2.8 zooms have been released in the meantime and those might perform better.
Chromatic aberrations
Lateral
The Nikon AF-S 24-70mm 2.8G shows some lateral CA at all focal lengths. At the 24mm setting they are strongest, therefore I decided to show you the situation at this setting.
The correction in Lightroom is luckily doing a good job at getting rid of this aberration.
Longitudinal
Nikon’s f/1.4 primes of the AF-S era show pretty strong longitudinal CA, but these f/2.8 zooms are well corrected for it. Even in backlit scenarios I hardly encountered any fringing.
Conclusion
good
|
average
|
not good
|
This Nikon AF-S 24-70mm 2.8G was (probably still is) a wildly popular lens. In eight years Nikon made more than a million of these, that means 400 per day, which is just crazy. With the end of the DSLR era and successors showing up, you can often find this lens for less than 500 bucks in great condition. The latest mirrorless 24-70mm 2.8 offerings are more than two grand, so it might be worth wondering, if this old lens is still good enough.
Talking about myself, the answer to that question is most certainly yes. But what do you give up when going for this lens instead of the latest and greatest?
The lenses designed between 2000 and 2010, they are generally very good at what they have been originally designed for. The latest lenses on the other hand, they are simply very good at everything. Which is of course nice, but often led to more complex, more expensive and often bigger lenses.
What do I mean by that? This lens was mainly aimed at reportage and wedding photographers that need a “do it all” lens. It has some field curvature at infinity at the 24mm end at wider apertures and the 70mm end is generally a bit weaker with slightly lower contrast and resolution figures.
The latest lenses in this class also have a flat field at infinity from f/2.8 and a more even performance across the focal length range. This is what you pay a lot of money for, yet I am pretty sure only few people who buy such a lens will ever make actual use of that.
buy from ebay.com | ebay.de | B&H (affiliate links) starting at $450/450€
Alternatives
There are countless standard zooms available and as I have only used very few of them, I cannot offer you a detailed assessment how they compare to this Nikon AF-S 24-70mm 2.8G at this point.
You can find many of the E-mount standard zoom lenses discussed in our Sony FE Guide though.
Sample images
You can find most of the sample pictures in full resolution here.
Further Reading
- All Nikon Lens Reviews
- Technical Knowledge
- Review: Mr. Ding 50mm 1.1
- Review: Sigma 35mm 1.2 Art DG DN
- Discuss this review with our Discord community
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The 24-70mm F2.8 G definitely had a soft spot in my heart. 11 years ago, it was the first pro standard zoom I used and I was deeply impressed by its image quality and build quality. It gets even more popular and legendary when the not-so-good VR E successor came out.
But still I think the standard zoom lens section is where you see a great leap from DSLR to mirrorless era. Now I’m using a 24-70mm F2.8 GM2 and am very happy with it. Also these DSLR SWM lenses tend to break their motors over time and had cost me a fortune to repair 🙁
Bastian starts to use 24-70? Time has changed😉
Firstly, can I say that the photos at the top of this report are absolutely fantastic. The shots you got at the fun fair are fantastic.
Secondly, it would be absolutely fantastic for you to now review the newest Sony 24-70mm GM ii and give your thoughts about the newest of the new compared to this lens. Perhaps you already have that idea in the works!
This Nikon is crazy good compared to its era. Nikon was not taking any hostages back then and with so many lenses sold, they only need the smallest of margin to make a profit.
Most new mirrorless Nikon lenses are making more compromises than they need to when weighed together with their price. They are still very good in a world where sharpness is the “only metric” but I feel Nikon is cutting some corners that they did not use to.
On a side note, If you ever review 24-70 GM II, please test rightmost 20% of the frame at 70mm (but also > 50mm) compared to other sides. I have tested 5 copies of the lens and all seem to have this problem. I feel its design of the lens and any copy that does not have it is an outlier. Or maybe all copies I tried in my country are such copies because you cannot really return it for that here 🙂
Still it’s nitpicking since the 24-70 GM II behaves pretty much like a prime lens but it’s not one.
An interesting, if slightly surprising review. We never had you down as using such a huge zoom lens Bastian
I personally avoided a 24-70mm zoom for years, not just because I prefer primes, but because of the size, weight and mediocre quality of the original Sony GM
The Sony 24-70 GM2 changed that.
Affordability aside, this huge Nikon monster lens and it‘s monster adapter are just too big and heavy for me.
Each to their own I guess
If someone offers a Sony 24-70mm 2.8 GM II for 450€ I will gladly take the offer 🙂
How much does the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 DG DN II cost in your country? It costs around US$1100 here. It’s the perfect lens except chromatic aberration.
In Dollar around 1450.
At least on E-mount this doesn’t seem worth the effort. Even if you insist on having 24mm and ignore the various Tam/Sigma 28-70s you can get a native Samyang 24-70 F2.8 for the same price, which probably performs and handles better
A Sigma 24-70 F2.8 G1 or Sony 24-70 GM1 are a little more expensive but start to really outclass this lens
And all of them should have better handling and better autofocus without the adapter.
Already for the Sony A-mount and Canon EF-mount versions I see no compelling reason to adapt them. Even thought adapter compatibility and lens quality is better for those lenses. But F-mount? only really worth it on Z-mount maybe
I always love it when people talk smack about equipment they never used 🙂
I doubt you have ever used one of the Monster adapters or that Samyang lens – which you are recommending without knowing anything about it.
1.) First I am not talking smack about the 24-70 F2.8 G, I just pointed out that there are better options
2.) I can assess handling without ever having held that 24-70 F2.8 G as the pure combination of weight and forward shifted CoG due to the adapter that handling will be worse than any of the native lenses. I have enough experience with various adapted lenses including adapting the Canon 24-70 II, which is lighter than this Nikon
3.) The Nikon G does not optically compete with the modern Sigma or GM gen 1.. VS the Samyang the both have pros and cons, but overall the Samyang is the better optic
4.) The compatibility even of unofficial third party E-mount lenses like the Samyang 24-70 F2.8 is just better. Stopped down focussing, video AF, 10+ FPS shooting etc… all are just not up to par on adapted lenses
Nah, wrong again, Nat. This Nikon 24-70 2.8 G lens was absolutely epic when it was released back in 2007 and I’d put my money on the Nikon in a comparison with the Sony GM 1 any day of the week. Oh, and the Nikon 24-70 2.8 S mirrorless lens is best 24-70 2.8 lens you can buy (and is better than the overrated Sony GM II).
optically 24-70 instruments are the hardest to design.
it is probably only in the latest iteration where there has been meaningful and considerable progress optically.
from a use case standpoint, adapted has its quirks.
every 24-70mm is tilted on one side or another at specific focal lengths and distances. this discussion is really hard to make