![\"\"](\"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/400s_hood.jpg\")
<\/a>Construction and Handling<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
When you first look at the Nikkor 400mm f\/4.5 VR S, you may mistake it for a 70-200mm f\/2.8 or a 100-400mm zoom. It’s surprisingly small for a lens of its length and aperture, at just over 9 inches, with only the large 95mm front element hinting at its true nature. The second thing you notice is how remarkably light it is. At just 1160g and with a construction that puts most of the weight towards the lens mount, the Z 400mm f\/4.5 is incredibly easy to carry and shoot. The lens is lighter than most 70-200mm f\/2.8 lenses, and feels even lighter than its weight would suggest, yet it still manages that 400mm focal length at a fairly bright f\/4.5 aperture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Nikon clearly prioritized low weight in the building of this lens, they didn’t sacrifice build quality to do so. The Z 400mm f\/4.5 S is constructed with a mostly plastic exterior, but the materials and the build feel extremely high-end. There is no flex, creaking, or play in any part of the lens, with smooth, well damped controls, a very smooth acting tripod collar, and a fully weather-sealed construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lens handles incredibly well on any Nikon camera with a grip (so, anything save the Zf and Zfc, if you don’t have an accessory grip installed). It’s light enough that there’s no issue even carrying the lens just by the camera between shots. Likewise, the light weight and outstanding stabilization make this is a lens that is very easy to hand hold for long periods of shooting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Nikon’s other Z mount lenses, but unlike most other supertelephoto lenses, the 400mm f\/4.5 S has fairly spartan controls. The large manual focus ring turns smoothly, and in front of that sits the knurled customizable control ring. As I’ve mentioned many times on this site, the lack of clicks on the control ring make it a bit useless in my opinion, and I tend to disable them on my Nikon cameras. Beyond the two rings, there is a manual focus \/ autofocus switch and a focus limiter switch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a few buttons, here, though, that allow for some additional functionality. First, like a lot of Nikon’s S-Line lenses, there is a programmable L-Fn button at the rear of the lens. However, the 400mm f\/4.5 also has an L-Fn 2 button: four of them actually, spaced around the end of the lens. While this can be set to a variety of functions, I think most people will use it in conjunction with the final button: the focus Memory Set button. The Memory Set button is located on the right side of the lens and is easily activated by the middle finger on your right hand while shooting. Holding this button down will tell the lens to remember its current focus position. You can then set one of the camera or lens buttons to recall that focus position, and it’s natural to use the L-Fn2 button for this purpose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With a lens like this, you might be shooting smaller birds that are fairly close to you, but then you see another bird in flight in the distance. With this function you can shoot that distant subject, then press the focus recall button and it will instantly return focus to your previously set position, increasing your chances of getting that key shot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The lens includes an integral tripod collar, which as I mentioned earlier turns very smoothly when you release the tension on the locking knob. The collar is not removable, but the tripod foot is removable with a quick twist of the locking knob. Nikon’s foot on this lens is a standard lens foot with 1\/4″ screw mounts to attach tripod plates, but there are several manufacturers that make alternate feet for this collar, which can add a built-in Arca-Swiss dovetail and a QD socket for easy attachment to a sling or other QD accessories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lens comes with a deep plastic lens hood that locks securely in place. The hood is lined in rubber at the end to prevent scuffs if you tend to stand the lens up by the hood. I tend to keep the hood permanently mounted, as my long lens case easily fits the 400mm f\/4.5 S with the hood in shooting position. If you reverse the hood, the lens is small enough that it can even fit in some larger shoulder bags. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The lens is fully compatible with Nikon’s Z teleconverters. Using the 1.4x TC will turn the lens into a 560mm f\/6.3, while the 2x makes it an 800mm f\/9. I have used both 1.4x and 2x teleconverters with this lens, and will discuss their use further in the Image Quality section. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Nikkor Z 400mm f\/4.5 VR S utilizes a stepping motor for autofocus, but unlike some of the cheaper stepping motors used in some other lenses, Nikon’s STM lenses are quite quick. The 400mm f\/4.5 is a very fast focuser, and can quickly acquire and track focus on your subject, even at high rates of speed. I found focus accuracy to be excellent, and it really sings on the Z8, especially with the latest 2.0 firmware on that body. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Z 400mm f\/4.5 S features Nikon’s Vibration Reduction optical image stabilization, and the VR unit in the 400mm f\/4.5 is excellent. Nikon rates the VR for 5.5 stops on a lens without in-body stabilization and 6 stops for bodies with it. In real-world use, I found the VR on the 400mm f\/4.5 to be outstanding. I was able to fairly consistently get sharp shots as slow as 1\/10 to 1\/15s handheld, which is around 5 stops of real-world stabilization. However, in real-world use you’re not generally going to be shooting that slow, as most subjects that you’d capture with a 400mm prime will generally require higher shutter speeds, or will be landscapes where you might be on a tripod. Still, if you need the VR, it works very well. The shot below was taken handheld at 1\/30s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, in practice the benefits of optical stabilization of this caliber extend beyond slower shutter speeds. Lenses like the 400mm f\/4.5 are often used for wildlife shooting, where you’re shooting at higher shutter speeds. However, the VR has massive benefit here too due to the exceptionally stable viewfinder. I’ve used optically stabilized telephoto lenses for years, but the VR in the 400mm f\/4.5 is among the very best I’ve used at maintaining a stable viewfinder. When handholding this lens, I feel like I’m almost using the lens on a tripod with a gimbal. It’s provides an extremely stable view that makes composition and acquiring your subject significantly easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One would expect a $3,250 prime lens to have the goods optically, and I’m glad to say, the Z 400mm f\/4.5 VR S certainly does. As you’ll see, the lens is simply a gem in the optical department – even more making that light weight something to marvel at. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The 400mm f\/4.5 VR S is a lens that provides excellent sharpness across the frame straight from its widest aperture. Wide open, the lens shows slightly less performance at the edge of the frame than in the center, but it’s still sharp to the edges. Stopping down a little gains almost nothing in the central part of the image frame while bringing the edges up to very near the center. There’s really not much more to discuss here – it’s brilliant. Click here<\/a> for a 100% crop of the image below, taken wide open at f\/4.5:<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the 1.4x Teleconverter mounted, sharpness remains very good across the frame at 560mm f\/6.3, with very minor improvement stopped down a touch. I have no qualms whatsoever about using this lens with a 1.4x TC. testing the lens with the 1.4x vs cropping the bare lens does show a noticeable detail advantage with the teleconverter. This is often not the case, so it’s really nice to see that benefit here. With the 2x teleconverter, image sharpness is still pretty good, and definitely usable, but I found that there was no real additional detail resolved by using the 2x TC when compared to a cropped shot with the 1.4x converter attached. So if you want to extend reach with this lens, I can easily recommend picking up the 1.4x TC, but I wouldn’t bother with the 2x. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Being a reasonably fast telephoto, depth of field can be very shallow when shooting the 400mm f\/4.5S, especially for closer subjects. As such, most of your images outside of landscape use will have some sort of subject separation and foreground and background blur. The 400mm f\/4.5 VR S puts in a good performance here, with smooth backgrounds and no obvious structure to specular highlights. It falls short of the creamiest lenses I’ve used, however, as there can be a bit more contrast to the backgrounds than on some other lenses. Still, it’s a very nice performance here. Luckily, neither of the teleconverters appear to have any obvious affect on the quality of the bokeh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like you would expect from a high-end modern lens, the 400mm f\/4.5S shows good strong contrast at all apertures. Likewise, color is rich and vibrant, without any obvious color casts. Overall, there’s essentially nothing to complain about here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The lens shows negligible lateral chromatic aberration and also controls longitudinal chromatic aberration extremely well. There foreground and background color fringes are essentially absent, even when shooting high contrast targets, and as such, it’s a near apochromatic performance in this department. Very impressive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Nikkor Z 400mm f\/4.5 VR S has shown a fairly remarkable performance thus far, and the good news continues with discussion of distortion. The lens displays a small amount of pincushion distortion that isn’t particularly field relevant unless you are shooting architecture that has a pure grid-like nature. Even then, it’s difficult to see unless you toggle the lens profile on and off. Overall, a very nice performance here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The lens shows moderate vignetting at f\/4.5 that eases by f\/6.3 and is essentially gone at f\/8. I like a small amount of vignetting in my images (and often add a bit more in post to highlight a subject), so no issues whatsoever here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally we reach the one optical characteristic where the lens falls a bit short, and that’s flare control. When shooting into the sun, the lens loses a fair bit of contrast and can display rather large and obvious multicolored ghosts. Considering how good many of the Nikkor Z lenses are at flare control, this was a bit of a surprise, but I also found it not to really matter much in the real world. The included hood shades the front element very well, and due to the narrow angle of view, it is a rare thing to shoot with the sun in frame. In fact, in the over 2,500 images I took with the lens over a 7 month period, the only shots I took into the sun were those I took specifically to test flare performance, as seen below. Using the 1.4x TC magnifies the flare and introduces a couple more ghosts as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Overall, the Nikon 400mm f\/4.5 VR S is a gem of an optic. It’s very sharp straight from f\/4.5, has outstanding color and contrast, very good bokeh, low distortion, and almost no chromatic aberration. The only weak point optically is worse than average performance against bright light. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That’s a pretty unbalanced list above, and that’s because the Nikkor Z 400mm f\/4.5 VR S is an outstanding lens. It’s very sharp, with beautiful rendering characteristics, and it has wonderful optical performance in a very compact and light weight body. Autofocus and image stabilization are both excellent, and even the price is quite good. It’s not a cheap lens, that’s for sure, but similar lenses from other manufacturers have typically come in at significantly higher price points. <\/p>\n\n\n\n About the only real down side is some worse than average flare performance. The other thing worth talking about is simply the general usefulness of this focal length. If you need a 400mm prime, and don’t want to carry or pay for a giant 400mm f\/2.8, this lens will serve you extremely well. However, for me, the 400mm length a little awkward for what I tended to use it for. I used the lens predominantly for wildlife and birds, and while you can certainly use the lens for that, it’s a little short for a lot of birding. As such, I used it with the 1.4x TC most of the time. It’s also too long for general purpose telephoto work like a 100-400mm lens can do. I think if you want to use it for birds, something like the Nikon 180-600mm f\/5.6-6.3, the 600mm f\/6.3 or the 800mm f\/6.3 will all serve you a little better. However, if the 400mm focal length suits your needs, it’s a gem of an optic and an easy recommendation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Click on an image to enlarge.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 400mm prime lenses have long been staples of any good lens system. Most manufacturers have a top-tier 400mm f\/2.8 in their lineup that usually goes for well into 5 figure cost territory and deliver incredible image quality. Few manufacturers, though, have bothered to make 400mm primes that are a little slower. Canon made the EF […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"yes","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[524,242,26,306,9,488,40,8,176,194,487],"class_list":["post-12126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-400mm","tag-birds","tag-lens","tag-lens-review","tag-mirrorless","tag-nikkor","tag-nikon","tag-review","tag-telephoto","tag-wildlife","tag-z-mount"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/400s_hood.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p28RGq-39A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12126"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12860,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12126\/revisions\/12860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a>Autofocus<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Vibration Reduction (Image Stabilization)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Continue: Image Quality<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Image Quality<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Sharpness<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/a>Bokeh<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Contrast, Color and Chromatic Aberration<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Distortion, Flare and Vignetting<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Continue: Conclusion and Image Samples<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Pros<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\n
Cons<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\n
Image Samples<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>If you enjoyed this review, check out my other reviews in the Review Index<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"