LOWA Z-8S GTX C

Product Information

The lens focuses in around 0.3 sec from infinity to 0.29m (1:10 magnification), which is very fast. Hunting didn’t occur under the well-lit test conditions. The focus/control ring is 49mm wide. Its surface is not rubberized but as it moves super smooth and can easily be operated even with your pinky the finely knurled metal surface is well up to its task. But the ring now covers a dominant portion of the lens’s surface – as compared to the 30mm wide focus ring of the Sigma or the 24mm width on the Nikon AF-S 20mm f1.8G. This increases the risk of inadvertently turning the ring and changing focus, exposure compensation or aperture. I’m not overly happy with this. The 24mm Z Nikkor has a 10 degrees narrower angle of view and came Highly Recommended in my Nikon Z 24mm f1.8 S review. Optically, the lens is comprised of 12 elements in 8 groups, two of which are extra-low dispersion (ED) elements. Nikon did not incorporate any aspherical lens elements into the design, because they are known to negatively impact the lens’ bokeh performance. The Nikon Z 85mm f/1.8 S is coated with both Nano Crystal Coat and Super Integrated Coating to reduce ghosting and flare. There are nine rounded aperture blades, and the lens is fully weather-sealed, similar to other Nikon Z S primes. NIKON Z 7 + NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.8 S @ 85mm, ISO 200, 1/2000, f/2.8 Bokeh, the feel, character or quality of out-of-focus areas as opposed to how far out of focus they are, is excellent. The Z MC 105mm f/2.8 macro lens handles extremely well. There’s a huge manual focus ring, an additional control ring that you can customize, a function button, an EL display, and a focus limiter switch. In short, this lens has almost all of Nikon’s bells and whistles.

The outstanding sharpness and clarity, characteristic of S-Line lenses, enables rendering of the finest textures in hair and skin tones, while excellent point-light reproduction capabilities achieve brilliant night and urban landscape imagery. Combining the widest aperture of f/1.8 with a short focus distance can yield a fairly tight depth of field. (Image credit: Matthew Richards/Digital Camera World) Performance Like I stated earlier, these boots have kept my feet dry and warm in cold / wet climates. There aren’t any drain holds on the side so water can’t get in that way. The materials are such that water literally slides down the side of the boot. They don’t absorb water easily at all. The optical path is based on 12 elements in 10 groups, and includes four aspherical elements and an ED (Extra-low Dispersion) element. The overall aim is to maximize sharpness and contrast while keeping distortions and chromatic aberrations to a minimum. Nano Crystal Coat is also applied to minimize ghosting and flare, and to help retain good contrast even when shooting into the light.Vignetting can be a problem for more than just the obvious reason of darker corners. It also leads to bokeh-related issues, particularly a “cat’s eye” shape in out-of-focus corners of the image. Lens designers can minimize vignetting at wide apertures by giving the lens a larger image circle. (This often improves corner sharpness at wide apertures as well.) However, the tradeoff of a larger image circle is that the lens must be larger, and usually more expensive, than normal. And while Nikon has kept the Plena to a pretty reasonable 995 grams / 2.19 pounds, it’s still a big piece of glass. Distortion -0.5: This lens produces mild barreldistortion, but it's negligibleand certainly not noticeablein mostcases. Verdict Closing down the aperture a little reduces the corner shading in raw files. By f/3.2 it’s negligible. Here are extreme worst-case examples had by exposing for the dark underside of a palm tree and putting the full disc of the sun in the corner. Ignore the rainbow effects around the sun at smaller apertures, these are sensor artifacts and not caused by this lens.

That’s one of Nikon’s difficulties with the new Z lineup: convincing buyers – many of whom already own excellent F-mount glass – that the S lineup doesn’t have your everyday f/1.8 lenses. And, as you can see from the specifications below, the 50mm f/1.8 S is more than an “everyday” lens in some important ways: Handling and Build Quality The Lowa Z-8S weight just over 3 pounds for the pair. When I went from walking in my standard issue combat boot to the Lowa Z8S, it was like walking on a cloud. Now, there are definitely lighter combat boots out there, and if you’re not going to be wearing a boot through rugged conditions, then you may be okay going with a lighter boot, but for such a tough and durable boot like the Lowa Z-8S, I was surprised at how light they were.The lens body features two lens Fn buttons, to which a wide variety of functions can be assigned. One is positioned on the top of the lens enabling smooth adjustment of settings even when shooting in vertical orientation. Exposure is uniform across the aperture range, except that even with Vignette Correction ON it tends to expose less wide-open at f/1.8 and f/2. This is a a little weird; cameras for many decades have always added a little extra exposure wide-open to compensate for overall falloff.

They do all of this while keeping my feet dry and happy, and I believe the Z-8S GTX is the most-comfortable LOWA footwear I have ever worn. Disclosure As you may already know, ultra-wide angle lenses like the Nikon Z 20mm f/1.8 S are not really designed to yield pleasing bokeh, especially with so many aspherical lens elements. Aspherical lens elements often result in busy highlights, defined shapes, and onion-shaped bokeh. So even though you can photograph subjects at close distances at maximum aperture, do not expect to see beautiful specular highlights. Despite all this, I personally found the Nikon Z 20mm f/1.8 S to be fairly good in terms of bokeh performance when shooting subjects at extremely close distances. One of my favourite features of the Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8 S is the ability to use the focus ring to adjust the exposure compensation or aperture setting. Field curvature is only visible at very wide apertures between f/1.8 and f/2, and it is very mild in nature. While optical performance is the same, this Nikon lens adds autofocus (the Zeiss is manual-focus only) and costs less than one-sixth as much. The ZEISS needs the FTZ Adapter while this Nikon Z lens works directly on Nikon's Z cameras. The Nikon lens is also much smaller and lighter.Rated 5 stops improvement when used with the Nikon Z cameras. The lens itself has no internal stabilizer. These are some pretty impressive specifications. There aren’t a lot of lenses where I just end up typing “yes” for all the high-end features. But the Z MC 105mm f/2.8 S has pretty much everything in Nikon’s arsenal, from a fluorine-coated front element to a dedicated function button on the lens. It depends. Are you going to be wearing this boot in warmer climates or are you going to be in colder / more wet environments?