Hi James, great vid and O have learned a lot from you. I have done several of these shots myself useing Star stax, but it has stopped working and cant seem to get it to work. Has star stax stopped working? And is there an alternative programme that is just as easy to use? Thank you for your time.

Another option would be to pick up the 70-200 or 70-180, but you are not getting much extension over 120mm… or use the cheap 50-250mm in DX and deal with the 20mp images.

Nice, but I prefer 28-75 mm f/2.8 and 70-180mm f/2.8 instead of this f/4 lens

Like straight out of a Zdislav Beksinski painting.

People honestly dont appreciate this lens as much as it deserves 😊

I have one, it's great! BUT, one cannot use filters with it. There is an attachment that will allow you to use 150ml square filters, but the cost of the attachment and filters, is far more than the cost of the lens.

You dont think much about the lenses when you click the shutter.

Pictures are beautiful. Did you added some sharpness when editing the picture ? Asking because I have the Iris 15mm f2.4 and the Nikon 24mm f1.8 G ED and now would like to only go with 1 lens due to weight and manual focus on the Iris. I always used prime lens to have good quality. Do you think the Nikon Z 14-30 should give me same quality ? thanks a lot

that lens lives on my z8 98% of the time. It is a GREAT lens, tack sharp, fast focus - I use this lens almost every gig I have had over the past year. NO complaints AT ALL.

I enjoyed your review.

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NGOMONG MULU ANJIR, TUTOR NYA GAK ADA

Lost equipment is all the part of the photographic experience - I've lost so many lens caps (even when tied to the camera) even lost my kit lens. Luckily I haven't lost my head - still plodding on - keep well.

I've never been to the Isle of Man, James - seen it from Cumbria, Scotland and its islands. You certainly seem to be blessed with great skies! I visited the Fanal Forest, Madeira in 2020 - sadly the mist was so thick each day that I couldn't see the famous laurel trees. Really dangerous there as you couldn't see a metre ahead.

wow you captured Sri Lanka...

Hi i just picked up a used 750 + 85 g, looking to buy tamron 24-70 2,8 g2 after watching your video

I prefer the portrait because it matches the elements geometry in the scene 😁

There are a lot of good questions asked in the comments. Some replies would be appreciated. 👍😎🇳🇿✨

took over 1 minute to say he wilp show us how to focus to infinity.

What a beauty. Solid, chunky....feels like you'd get 10 years of use out of this.

Informative. I have been researching 100mm grad filters to use with my Maven filters. Lots of advantages to NOT using them as you noted.

It is expensive but it’s a genuinely amazing lens and the focal length is so much more useful than you might think. 200mm just wasn’t enough reach but the 400 give you so many more shooting opportunities for landscapes. It was so expensive, but for me I knew this is a lens that I will have for 10+ years since mirrorless is here to stay. Just make sure it’s insured with the rest of your gear

I've used geared heads most of my career. Mostly the Manfrotto juniors. But I wanted to switch to a head that had an Arca Swiss type clamp. I bought a Benro and right out of the box, the first one was so loose that it was sloppy and had unwanted movement. I immediately sent it back for a replacement. The second one was just the opposite. So tight that I could barely turn the knobs to get it to operate. AND when it did, you could hearing metal on metal, grinding. Pretty unusable and not likely to last very long. I immediately returned it for a refund. Sorry, but Benro's quality control sux!

I’m so glad I saw this video. I was about to pull the trigger on the Kase Armour Master kit which includes grad and reverse grad filters. At £909 it is no small investment! I have a Z8 which has incredible dynamic range and your advice about bracketing has convinced me to go with circular filters and bracket (if required) in Lightroom. Thanks so much. You’ve earned a subscriber and great to see a fellow Nikon user in landscape photography (there seem to be lots of us 😊)

Really appreciate this. That 2.8 is so tempting, but hate to put down that kind of cash…

Can you remove the ball head on this one and replace it with a fluid head?

What about the Nikon Z 28-400mm f/4-8 VR lens?...It's not that expensive and I think it's not bad..

Thank you great video just purchased a set.

I have the 24-200 for my z6 and z6 ii but have ordered this lens as it’s so compact. I rarely use the extra reach of the 24-200 but I’ll hold onto it for the moment as it’s so versatile. Great video 👍

shame you couldn’t try it. You would buy it. Sell the kid. They go for a lot on the dark web. Yes I’m kidding. Hope it’s all worked out for you in the last year

But isn't the more expensive 14-24 F2.8 Z even better, brighter IQ , fidelity , sharper ? I know it cost double , but i think it might be worth it especially if you sell prints for living . So don't buy twice just get the better lens straight away. Or get the cheaper now second hand the faster brighter Japan made versions F mount zoom F2.8 14-24 , F24-70 put FTZ adapter on your Z mount mirrorless body. This set up will be better than the slower F4 Z mount but a bit on the heavier side. I notice with other Nikon prime fixed and Zooms with F2.8 , F1.8, F1,4 F1.2 even the ones made in china or Thailand are significantly sharper , images are really noticeably much brighter than the slower F stop lenses that start at around F4 , F5.6 .and the down side is in lower lighting say in afternoons or early mornings you end up having to be pushing the camera to higher ISO to expose correctly , if you are hand holding and want to freeze motion like water or vegetation swaying, moving in wind or stopping the camera shake especially on high mega pixle cameras. Slow lenses are all good in bright light and on tri pods and if you don't need to freeze action but this is all compromises and putting limits on the F4 version If you want low noise , shooting in lower lighting conditions and hand holding . I think one of the main advantage of this F4 zoom is that it beats the F2.8 at close focusing is much lighter and way cheaper but its not really that cheap, its still pricy .

Awesome Video! Would you advise shooting with a star tracker? Or just increase the shutter time to around 30seconds since star trails will be less noticable in a large panorama?

Fantastic to the point review, will be my go to for landscapes paired with my Z9. thank you.

That's probably okay for a 14mm f/2.8 but it won't work so well with longer, heavier and/or wider aperture lenses. Infinity is often further than you think. Precision needed may not be achieved lining up markings on the lens. Focus shifts enough with temperature to have to keep rechecking and readjusting focus every hour or so throughout the night (due to ambient convective and radiative heat transfer, with or without dew heater). Also, where you point your camera will make a difference, especially with bigger/heavier lenses. Do live view MF at full digital zoom on a brighter star near your target. Bahtinov masks I also heard a lot of good things about but never tried one.

Thanks for making this really good video. And for show casing some great photos. 📷👌🙌

James, you really influenced my decision with your video. I am also a landscape photographer, but occasionally need a telephoto. The Nikon 100-400 is certainly good, but even for me, whose first child has now finished university and has a job (=no more money from Dad), it's way too expensive. You're right, for the 6.3% that I will use it, it's superfluous. I bought the Tamron 150 -500 for Nikon Z on offer today (for 1050.-€) and it's awesome. Fast, super sharp. That's all I need. Thank you very much !!!

Milky Way panoramas must take much much more wider to all directions not as your technique to avoid this strange stretching artifacts and compressed corners to the final result. Minimum overlap should be over 50% and multirow panoramas stitched by using only accurate software called PTGui

There's nothing to complain about with this lens. I got it with my Z 7 and have the 24-120 to use with it. Super combo. Thanks Nikon!

The 16-35mm f4 is not as fast as this lens at 18mm. At 18mm this lens is f3.5 which is a tiny bit faster. You give up 2mm of width for a little faster lens at a lower price.

Excellent video, bet that you had a Ball on 10/11th October? No4 - subscribed

Fibally someone that can explain it so simple and easy! Thank you!

Wow! You came to Tanzania, Sweet, Karibu Tena!

I've been considering picking one of these up for the occasional real estate gig. I hadn't considered them for landscape, but it makes so much sense! I have to say, though it initially seems like having to adjust each axis individually would take more time, getting that precision dialed in without having to readjust would actually make my workflow faster overall.

Hi, it might sound dumb but do you also need a leveling base?, i have one to spare, can they work together?

I rented this lens on four occasions to see if it fit my needs as a sports photographer. One of the areas where sports differs from wildlife photography is that you want as much bokeh as you can get to separate the subject from the background, which translates to lower f-stops. While it's great to have 400mm in sports, the 400mm f/2.8 is a bit out of my range. But I've found that I actually get better sports shots with a 70-200mm f/2.8 and 1.4x teleconverter. This gives me an effective 98mm to 280mm lens so it's virtually the same at the bottom end but 120mm shorter at the top. However, the combination gives me f/4 across the entire range of the lens, while the 100-400 starts at f/4.5 and goes up to 5.6. That makes a difference, especially in the lower lights of many sports venues at night. So while I think the 100-400 is a good lens and I did get some good quality images, I don't think it gives me enough extra, especially for the cost.

I love my D 850

Hello James, You might be interested in the Tamron 50-400, which has just been natively adapted to Z-mount. I was thinking along the same lines as you about the price/use ratio. Marc

We have just come back from an IOM Break, we went Wallaby spotting in the Curraghs, we spent two hours wandering and sitting quietly. After about an hour and a half we came across one, brilliant! Five minutes later we "found" another. They are really hard to see even on the photos we took, but, mission accomplished!!!

Thank you for the honest review. Just got our first one as our first good caliber camera. Tremendously excited for the journey

Ich bevorzuge 24-70 f/4 weil sie leichter und teilweise besser ist. Zusammen mit dem 70-180 f/2.8 ergibt das für mich die bessere Lösung. Manchmal wünsche ich mir auch eine einzige Linse. Aber zum ständigen Herumtragen ist mir 24-120 zu groß.