The lens has an aperture range of f/4.5 to f/32 at 100mm and f/5.6 to f/40 at 400mm. Shooting wide open, the aperture breakdown looks like this: 100mm to 124mm is f/4.5, 125mm to 184mm is f/4.8, 185mm to 269mm is f/5, 270mm to 359 is 5.3, and 360mm to 400mm is f/5.6. The 400mm f/2.8 is a great all-around lens. It’s perfect for sports photography, wildlife photography, and even portraits. The diameter of the Bokeh balls in the center is determined by the entrance pupil of the lens which is 71mm at 400mm focal length – the same as for the Nikon Z 70-200mm VR S at 200mm. Compression of the circle towards the corners is relatively strong wide open. The circle of confusion in the center stays round even down to f11. The inside of the Bokeh balls is only lightly textured but there is some outlining – albeit without coloration from loCA. Above: Heading out to the corner at the maximum f5.6 aperture shows the lens essentially maintaining this performance with only the very slightest hint of softness or fringing if you’re really pixel-peeping. I’d be happy using it wide-open at 100mm though which is good news since the maximum aperture of f5.6 isn’t exactly bright to start with. Here’s the same image taken at f8 and now at f11 to show there’s little to be gained by closing the aperture. The Sony FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM OSS has similar size, tripod collar, macro ratio, weight and price, and is also Made in Japan.

The Z 100-400mm VR S is the first super-telephoto lens in Nikon’s Z-mount line-up. Naturally, if you shoot with a DSLR or have an FTZ/FTZ II mount adapter for your Z-series camera, you’re spoilt for choice when it comes to super-tele prime and zoom lenses. The Nikon Z 100-400mm VR has no distortion as shot with the default distortion correction activated, and has mild to moderate pincushion distortion if you turn the correction off, or if you shoot raw data rather than JPG images and whatever software you use to create visible images from raw data doesn't correct the distortion as the camera does. If you're not getting ultra-sharp pictures with this, be sure not to shoot at f/11 or smaller where all lenses are softer due to diffraction, always shoot at ISO 100 or below because cameras become softer at ISO 200 and above, avoid shooting across long distances over land which can lead to atmospheric heat shimmer, be sure everything is in perfect focus, set your camera's sharpening as you want it (I set mine to the maximum) and be sure nothing is moving, either camera or subject. If you want to ensure a soft image with any lens, shoot at f/16 or smaller at ISO 1,600 or above at default sharpening in daylight of subjects at differing distances in the same image.

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Testing for center sharpness at 100mm, f/4.5 was quite good for being wide open with the most improvement just one-third stop down at f/5. At f/11 it’s probably at its peak sharpness but it’s all a wash in the mid-ranges. Between f/20 closed down all the way to f/32 it does drop in sharpness, but actually still looks good and perfectly usable considering the diffraction it’s battling. The corner sharpness at 100mm gets considerably better at f/6.3 and is at its best at f/11.

At its nearest 8.2-foot focus distance, the Z 400mm F4.5 captures objects at 1:6.25 life-size, which falls shy of the macro range. If you want a long lens that's better for close-up work, the Nikkor Z 100-400mm is the obvious alternative. It focuses down to 2.5 feet for 1:2.6 reproduction. We’re used to seeing robust kit from Pentax with impressive build quality, and this lens is no exception. It feels particularly solid and has a durable, weather-sealed construction. The flipside is that it’s physically larger and noticeably heavier than competing lenses, weighing in at 2kg. That’s nearly twice the weight of the Sigma and Tamron 100-400mm lenses, although they’re only available in Canon and Nikon mount options. Autofocus speed lives up to Tamron’s claims and proved both very fast and consistently accurate throughout our testing. It’s also virtually inaudible, even in a very quiet room with nothing else going on. Tamron doesn’t make any claims about the effectiveness of its VC (Vibration Compensation) optical stabilization for this lens but, in our tests with a Sony A7R III body, we found it gave about a 4-stop benefit in beating camera-shake. It’s worth remembering that the EOS R6 and R5 are superb performers when it comes to high ISO imaging, so shooting ISO 3200 for example isn’t the end of the world – but it is high enough that you would notice a difference on a lens that allowed you to open up to f/4.Lens sharpness has nothing to do with picture sharpness; every lens made in the past 100 years is more than sharp enough to make super-sharp pictures if you know what you're doing. The only limitation to picture sharpness is your skill as a photographer. It's the least talented who spend the most time worrying about lens sharpness and blame crummy pictures on their equipment rather than themselves. Skilled photographers make great images with whatever camera is in their hands; I've made some of my best images of all time with an irreparably broken camera! Most pixels are thrown away before you see them, but camera makers don't want you to know that.

Don't worry, because you'll almost never see this panel light up anyway. You have to press the DISP button for it to turn on, and then it turns off 10 seconds later, or 10 seconds after you last did anything to turn it on like change a setting. It's a little better than the Nikon Z 70-200mm f/2.8 VR and about as good as Canon's RF 100-400mm IS (which sells for one-quarter the price), and not quite as good as the competitive Canon RF 100-500mm L IS. These MTF charts show the computed lens-performance of lenses wide open at infinity without influence of diffraction at 10 line-pairs/mm (red) and 30 lp/mm (blue). Higher values are better (more contrast) and the closer the dotted and solid lines are together the less contrast dependents on the orientation of the test-pattern (less astigmatism). The x-axis displays the distance from the optical axis (=center of the sensor) in mm. I’ll show you real-life performance at 4 mm (“center”), 13 mm (APS-C/DX-corner), and 20 mm (FF/FX-corner) on a on a 45MP Nikon Z7 camera. Above: At 400mm on the EOS R6, I needed a shutter speed of 1/400 for a sharp result without any stabilisation, versus 1/50 with IBIS and IS. While that worked out closer to three stops of compensation on the day, my results down to 1 /6 still looked pretty good. The 100-400mm VR is a great lens. More than any lab tests can show, I just point and shoot and always get brilliant, sharp, colorful images. It also focuses super close and handles extremely well.

In the course of testing our review sample, we spotted a few red kites – a medium-sized raptor. Opting for a definitely-sharp shutter speed of 1/4000 sec, and the maximum-available aperture of f/8 at 400mm, we found ourselves using ISO 3200 on the EOS R6. We could probably have shot 1/2000 sec with no real impact on motion blur, so ISO 1600 would have been an option. That was in pretty good light.