Thom Hogan

So here’s a question to ask yourself: what NIKKOR lens currently stands out as unique across all mounts these days?

Answer: 50mm f/0.95 NOCT.

Runner Ups: the 135mm f/1.8 Plena, 600mm f/6.3 VR S, and 800mm f/6.3 VR S.

Also considered: 28-400mm f/4-8 VR, 28-135mm f/4 PZ.

There was a time back in the film SLR and DSLR F-mount cycles when Nikon was continuous iterating truly unique lenses that no one else had: first zoom, first autofocus lens, first exotic telephotos, first 17-35mm f/2.8, first, first, first. And often times, those lenses stayed unique for a period of years. 

With the Z-mount Nikon seems gone more conservative and mainstream with their NIKKOR offerings. Instead of unique focal lengths and apertures, which drives different uses, we instead have seen Nikon opt for highest possible performance at well-known focal lengths and aperture combinations that are known to sell in quantity.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining about the quality of Nikon’s Z-mount offerings. With very few exceptions they’ve all turned out to be at or near best-in-class, and edge-to-edge sharpness with few other drawbacks makes for detailed, sharp, and anomaly-free images. I’m all for that.

What’s missing this time around seems to be true creativity in optics: designing lenses that just haven’t existed before, or which push extremes more extremely, as does the NOCT, which is probably the best testing lens to ever hit the byThom labs. Likewise, the 400mm f/2.8 TC VR S put exotic telephotos on notice that there’s a new standard in town, though I don’t judge it to be pushing extremes too extremely (Sony’s 400mm f/2.8 is close). 

We have had an odd couple of lens incidentals that now seem to be abandoned. For instance, the OLED display on some of the top S lenses now seems to be a thing of that past (as it should be). At the time some thought it to be a step forward, but my eye is not hovering over the lens barrel, and if the information is available to the lens barrel where I can’t see it, it should also be available in the camera’s displays, right? Oops. Misfire.

What strikes me is that so many of Nikon’s unique F-mount lenses never made it to mirrorless:

• 8-15mm f/3.5-4.5E fisheye zoom — solved four use cases in one lens
• 16mm f/2.8 fisheye — created and fulfilled the full-frame fisheye standard for years
• 17-35mm f/2.8D — at the time, outside the parameters of what you could find elsewhere, and coveted
• 20-35mm f/2.8D — a forgotten lens that seems pretty well suited to the creator era
• 35-135mm f/3.5-4.5 — yes, Nikon was there early; Tamron has now usurped the spot with a faster lens
• 70-180mm f/4.5-5.6D Micro-NIKKOR — hands down the most interesting and practical macro lens I’ve used
• 180mm f/2.8 — smaller and lighter than the 70-200mm f/2.8 when you just needed something fast near 200mm
• 180-400mm f/4E TC — no, the 120-300mm f/2.8 TC isn’t going to solve the same problem; and this lens was Nikon’s followup to the popular 200-400mm f/4, one of the great all-around wildlife lenses
• 200mm f/4D Micro-NIKKOR — about 75,000 users wonder why this lens was left to die in D-dom
• any PC-E lens — sure, not a big seller, but tilt-shift establishes a camera use well beyond what we can do with current Z-mount lenses

The reason for the lack of more unique lenses in the Z-mount almost certainly is due to bean counters. A few of the lenses I just listed did sell well, but many had smaller customer bases that Nikon may now be afraid of in the current “everything must return instant profit” era.

One question I now have is this: if Nikon were to suddenly get their path-blazing design mojo back, exactly what would that lens or lenses be? The problem now is that Canon, Sigma, Sony, and Tamron have all been nibbling away at unique opportunities, so a lot of “different” lenses Nikon might consider today would now look more copycat than unique. 

Again, I have no problem at all with what Nikon has produced so far in the Z-mount. Most of my needs are now met by lenses better than I used before. And as I age out, my actual needs are narrowing (to lenses I already own). There’s perhaps six to eight lenses that really belong in my gear closet now, though I have a few more. And those six to eight are covered by existing NIKKORs just fine.

Still, I wonder what would happen if Nikon let their optical engineers off their tight bean-counting leash. After all, in the past Nikon was putting out lenses that allowed us to do new things photographically on a pretty regular basis. I still remember the first mountain bike photographer discovering the 16mm f/2.8 fisheye and how that impacted the editorial market almost instantly. As Sontag so clearly explained, photography gets stale if you just do the same old things the same way as the past practitioner has been doing. Even the Insta and Toker communities are discovering that the hard way these days.

Thus my challenge to the NIKKOR group at Nikon is simple: show us the optics that allow us to do things we haven’t been able to do before, and I’ll show you my credit card.