Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsAmazing at what its meant to do
Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2020
If you understand what this lens is, this is a fantastic piece of glass in your bag. If you are going Z system and you need a feather light and ultra small landscape lens with excellent IQ, this is a must have. Ordered this from Amazon.com as the vendor on January 12th and received the legit US version with 1+4 warranty card.
I compared this directly to my F mount 20mm f1.8G, which is itself considered to be Nikons best ultra wide prime lens. I love that lens. Super sharp, minimal distortion, brilliant colors, and great contrast. The 14-30 f4 is virtually identical to the 20mm f1.8G at 20mm f4. Side by side, super pixel peeping, you cannot tell these two apart in terms of sharpness, contrast, colors, and so forth. The only difference is that the 20mm f1.8G has color fringing at f4 (and lower), while the 14-30 f4 never shows color fringing at any focal or aperture setting. I did not expect the 14-30 f4 to perform this well. Amazing!
The small size and light weight are exactly what I want in dedicated ultra wide to wide zoom landscape lens. I never bought any of the previous generations f4's and f2.8's for that reason. Too big, too heavy, too cumbersome. I cannot take these on a hike with me. Weather sealing? Good luck with that. Edge to edge sharpness? Good luck with that.
Obviously, the 14-30 is an f4 and not an f2.8 or f1.8 or smaller prime. 10 years ago, that mattered. You were lucky to get decent low light performance at 1600 ISO without a crazy amount of grain. With the Z6, thats a problem of the past. And since nobody cares about the Bokeh in the 14-30mm focal range, thats also not a thing. The use case where not being able to go lower than f4 is less desirable is with astro. But, things, of course, are never what they seem. I cannot shoot my 20mm f1.8G at f1.8 for astro. Way too much coma. I have to stop down to f2.8 to get acceptable results, but really the coma does not go away until f4. The 14-30 f4 matches that performance at f4. So, in reality, there is no speed advantage for astro with the 20mm f1.8G, for example, if you want quality results. There are astro-friendly primes that can shoot faster with no coma, but they tend to suck at everything else. Comparing the 14-30 f4 to other AF multi-use lenses, the 14-30 f4 actually fairs pretty well in astro.
There are two potential negatives with this lens, and one may not affect you. One is sample variation. There have been reports that sample variation may be high with this lens. Decentering, etc. My suggestion, is get out the test target and snap away. You should be able to determine if you got a bad copy there. Otherwise, get out there and shoot a ton with it while you can still return it. Second, the "baked in" corrections. For some, this is a real problem and you cannot do anything about it. The theory being that with "baked in" corrections the IQ suffers unrecoverable loss of detail, contrast, and so forth. I cannot perceive that in my images. Again, I compared this to what many consider to be a god-like prime and easily Nikons best ultra wide prime at the moment (which does not have "baked in" corrections). You cannot perceive the pixel stretching, blah, blah, blah. The images are identical (other than the 20mm f1.8 at f4 still showing color fringing). Believe what you want. I have done my tests and I have drawn my conclusions on actual results. The "baked in" corrections cause no ill effect that is perceivable even with the most extra pixel peeping.
For video shooters, this lens is usable throughout its range just fine. However, I prefer 20-30mm because the distortion is less, and I am too lazy to correct distortion in Davinci Resolve. 14-16mm, especially, is distorted in the corners. Resolve can totally straighten this lens out, so if you are willing to put in the time the results can be worth it. AF is silent, comparable to the 35mm Z and 50mm Z. You will not get the transmittance and IQ of a cinema lens. If you need that, this lens will not work for you. However, I would not rate the transmittance and IQ as poor. Its what you would expect from an ultra wide to wide zoom f4 lens.
I was not going to buy this lens. I really wasnt. It took me a good, long while to realize what this was. I decided to give it a shot being fully ready to return it. I am so glad I took that chance. This lens is amazing. Tiny, light, screw filters, prime lens edge to edge sharpness, beautiful colors, awesome contrast, minimal distortion. Rather good weather sealing to boot. Is the cost high? At full price of $1300, not really. This lens is covering 4 primes (14, 20, 24, 28), which would cost you about $3850 combined for the best F mount versions. And it is matching or exceeding the IQ of each of those primes. Reviews on YT are showing it beating all the F-mount ultra wide to wide zooms, pro or otherwise. At $1300, this is a great value. On sale, no brainer.