Nikon Nikkor Z 28mm F/2.8 Lens Review

If you’ve been following along with my coverage of Nikon’s Z mount lenses and cameras, you’ll know that I’ve been generally pleased with the ecosystem. Nearly every lens and camera that I’ve tested from the brand has been well-received. A couple of years ago, I even recommended the Nikon Z5 as the best overall camera on the market. That’s not to claim that any of these cameras and lenses are perfect. Such a thing doesn’t really exist. But for value, performance, and practical use, I think Nikon has been a standout.

A couple of years ago, I wrote an opinion piece titled The Dubious Origin and Uncertain Future of the “Standard” 50mm Lens in which I posited that the visual standard in photography has been shifting away from the field of view provided by the “standard” 50mm lens, toward the approximate FOV we get from a 26mm lens. I ended the piece with a personal opinion; that 28mm lenses are the best.

Nikon has a long history of making great 28mm lenses, many of which we’ve covered in the past. The 2.8cm f/3.5 H Auto Nikkor made for their S-series rangefinders was a workhorse of photojournalists in the 1960s, and the later F-mount 28mm f/2.8 Nikkor AIs of 1981 has long been held as a virtually perfect lens (distortion free, and with a surprisingly close minimum focus distance of 0.2m). Even the slower 28mm f/3.5 Nikkor AI and the lower-tier Series E 28mm f/2.8 are among the nicest manual focus vintage 28mm lenses you can buy (often for under $100). Nikon are simply masters of the 28.

So, I like Nikon, I love 28mm lenses, and Nikon makes particularly great 28mm lenses. You can imagine my anticipation and joy, then, when the brand’s latest 28mm arrived at my office for review.

The Nikon Nikkor Z 28mm F/2.8 has been mounted to my Nikon Z5 and ZF for quite some time now, and my opinion is predictable. I love it. While it may not be a lens to suit everyone’s taste, I think it’s one that most Nikon Z mount users should have in their camera bag.

[If you’d like to buy a Nikon Nikkor Z 28mm f/2.8, you can do so from our partners at B&H Photo or search the used market on eBay. Any purchase made using the preceding links will earn Casual Photophile a portion of the sale at no additional charge to you. This makes it possible for us to create the content you’re enjoying here, and we are so grateful.]

Specifications of the Nikon Nikkor Z 28mm F/2.8

• Focal Length: 28mm
• Maximum Aperture: f/2.8
• Minimum Aperture: f/16
• Lens Mount: Nikon Z
• Format Coverage: Full-Frame
• Angle of View: 75°
• Minimum Focus Distance: 7.5 in / 19 cm
• Magnification: 1:5 macro reproduction ratio; 0.2× magnification
• Optical Design: 9 elements in 8 groups
• Aperture Blades: 7 (rounded)
• Focus Type: Autofocus
• Image Stabilization: No
• Filter Size: 52 mm (front)
• Dimensions: Diameter: 2.8 in / 70 mm; Length: 1.7 in / 43 mm
• Weight: 5.5 oz / 155 g

Finer Points

Nikon’s mirrorless system lenses come in two main flavors; the standard Nikkor lenses, which are optimized for a balance of performance and value, and the S-Line Nikkors, which are optimized for pure performance with less regard to affordability. S-Line lenses tend to offer features not found on normal Nikkors, such as better coatings, focus breathing compensation, interesting control methodologies, and sometimes faster/constant apertures. There are even a couple of truly special, totally unique S-Line lenses that are truly amazing, such as the Plena. Ahh, what a lens.

But the Nikkor Z 28mm f/2.8 is not an S-Line lens. It’s a standard Nikkor lens, designed to provide great images at a great price. In this way, it’s not a groundbreaking lens, and it won’t surprise anyone whose held photography as their primary hobby for any significant length of time. It’s a standard 28mm lens in the same vein as so many 28s that have come before it. It’s small and lightweight. It’s reasonably fast, with a maximum aperture of f/2.8. It offers a broad field of view, naturally, and it’s an inexpensive lens. Like so many 28mm lenses from Nikon’s earlier days it’s simply a workhorse.

When mounted to a full frame camera, it acts as a wide angle lens. When fitted to a crop sensor camera, the lens provides an approximate FoV equivalent to a a 42mm lens on full frame cameras. 40mm lenses (or thereabouts) are great!

Build, Handling, and Image Quality

The 28mm Nikkor Z is made of plastic. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, in that it keeps cost low. While I admit that I do love a metal lens mount, I must also begrudgingly admit that the plastic on this lens feels solid, and in over a year of use, it’s never failed me.

It’s also a simple lens, having just a single focus ring control and nothing more. There’s no manual/auto-focus switch, no aperture control, etc. It’s just a plastic cylinder to hold the glass, and a focus ring for adjusting focus in manual mode. Nothing special, although it should be noted that most Nikon cameras will allow the user to set the focus ring to control either focus, aperture, or exposure compensation, which is a nice touch.

The lens does not come with a lens hood, but one may be installed using the 52mm front filter threads.

While not utilizing the advanced Nano-Crystal Coatings of Nikon’s S-Line, the Nikkor does offer Nikon’s standard Super Integrated Coating to suppress flares and ghosts in strong lighting conditions. The lens’ optical design features two aspherical lens elements, so that’ll be something to brag about.

Optically the little 28mm punches well above its price. In practice you get a very sharp center at f/2.8 and a lens that becomes uniformly very sharp when you stop down to f/4. By f/8, everything is perfectly sharp. The two aspherical elements and Nikon’s Super Integrated Coating help keep contrast and micro-contrast respectable for a budget optic, so images feel “clean” and snappy without the clinical look of some ultra-expensive glass.

If there’s a major weakness, it’s the vignetting. At f/2.8, it’s pretty egregious. While this should be expected from a small, fast-ish wide, and though it’s predictable and easy to correct in post, I must note that darkness at the edges of the frame can be heavy. Then again, vignetting can often be used to our advantage; falloff can create a point of focus or provide subtle subject separation.

Modest barrel distortion typical of a 28mm is automatically rectified in-camera, and further adjustments happen automatically using lens profiles in Lightroom/Camera Raw. Distortion is not an issue.

Chromatic aberration is well controlled for the price; you may see a touch of lateral CA on high-contrast edges in the corners, but it’s minor and usually removed by default profile corrections.

Flare and ghosts are pretty rampant. Nikon’s Super Integrated Coating does a solid job, but it’s not S-Line level anti-flare, so very strong backlight can still induce flare and ghosting, but nothing catastrophic. Use a lens hood, changer angles to not shoot into the sun, or just be wild and embrace the imperfection that is living.

Bokeh and out of focus rendering is nice, especially for a wide lens. The aperture’s seven rounded blades do well to keep the out-of-focus areas are pleasant and smooth when stopped down just a bit, and the close focus distance allows us to really isolate up-close subjects when shooting close and wide. The lens won’t produce the ultra-creamy separation of an f/1.4 prime, but for environmental portraits, street, and travel the rendering is pleasing and natural.

Close-focus distance is impressive. The 0.2× magnification / 7.5″ (19 cm) minimum focus distance allows close shots with strong perspective. Occasionally when browsing my images, I’ve come across some close-ups made with this lens and couldn’t be sure they weren’t made with my 50mm Macro until I checked the EXIF.

Overall, image quality is impressive relative to the price and size: a very usable, characterful 28mm that resolves well for everyday work and behaves politely in post-production.

[Additional Image Gallery]

Nikon NIKKOR Z 28mm f/2.8 Lens

Find Nikon 28mm F2.8, NIKKOR Z 28mm f/2.8 Lens featuring Z-Mount Lens/FX Format, Aperture Range: f/2.8 to f/16.

Internal competition comes from Nikon’s S-Line lenses. They make 24mm and 35mm S-Line lenses, and these are better performers, most notably in the areas of aperture (both are faster, with max apertures of f/1.8), flare control, vignette control, and mitigation of other optical anomalies such as chromatic aberration. However, these lenses are much pricier and much larger then our plebian Nikkor 28mm (both of these lenses cost close to $900).

There are a number of other interesting 28mm lenses for the Z mount, but they all demand some sort of compromise. Voigtlander’s 28mm f/1.5 is faster, but it’s manual focus only and costs $900. Viltrox’s autofocus 28mm lens costs just $99, but its maximum aperture is a sluggish f/4.5. The Typoch Simera 28mm f/1.4 is pretty, but it’s manual focus only and costs over $500.

So, to summarize, there is no other 28mm lens in Nikon Z mount that offers such a high level of performance for such a low price.

It’s hard to write about Nikon without mentioning Canon. The two brands have been battling for decades, and often newcomers to the hobby are stuck deciding between Canon and Nikon. If 28mm lenses are your deciding factor, here’s some info on Canon’s offering. Interestingly, Canon’s only 28mm lens in their mirrorless system is the Canon RF 28mm f/2.8 STM, a pancake-style lens which is more complicated in its construction (likely to achieve its small size), and pricier; the Canon lens costs $350 while Nikon’s 28 costs $296. (It should be noted that at the time of writing, and at many other times throughout the year, both Canon and Nikon are offering instant discounts so that the Canon lens costs $300, while the Nikon lens costs $225.)