Is the new Nikon 300mm f4 VR worth the wait?

This post is for Gearheads only - in particular Nikon Gearheads.

Yesterday Nikon released details of a new telephoto lens. World Peace didn't break out and no one one got cured of Cancer by this announcement but I went to bed very happy nevertheless.

I have a strange relationship with my Nikon 300mm f4 lens. I feel that this is as close as I could get to the perfect tool for my style of Nature Photography. It's not the longest, not the sharpest but a good combination of both. It's small and light enough to hike comfortably and has blazingly fast and accurate autofocus. If I ever fail as a Nature Photographer, it's not because of this tool.

However a Gearhead always has to move on. The one feature lacking is that this is not a VR (stabilized) lens and while I mostly shoot at a speed higher than the minimum to prevent camera shake, there are times when I would enjoy a slower shutter without a tripod. The rumours of a VR version of this lens being developed have been circulating since 2012 and in March 2013 patent filings in Japan were published on Nikon Rumors and other sites. This patent was for a 300mm f4 VR lens but an unconventional one. It made use of Fresnel technology.

Fresnel Lenses are not new ... you know them as the flat magnifiers used as a reading aid for those of us that have some visual challenges. Cheap, light but not known for stellar optical quality. So what was Nikon up to? I hoped that getting VR on this lens did not come at the expense of optics ... if so I would have to keep my oldie for sure.

Canon had a Fresnel telephoto which they called DO or Diffraction Optics. The 400mm f4 was initially introduced in 2012 to mixed reviews. While the lens had high resolution it suffered from low contrast. In November 2014 Canon solved the problem of low contrast with a multi layer Fresnel design so I could only hope that Nikon was watching and I wouldn't be dissapointed.

The Specifications were only released yesterday and there are no reviews yet, not even the preliminary first looks that come long before the detailed ones.

What I see from the specs is impressive and surpasses my expectations.

The Lens is half the weight or the old one and 30% shorter. In fact it hardly looks like a telephoto at all.

It has all of the recent Nikon goodies, Nano Crystal coating to improve contrast, ED glass to reduce  chromatic aberration, flourine coating to keep the lens surface clean and a 4.5 stop VR.

However it was the released MTF charts that just blew me away.

Here are some comparisons. First, the NEW 300mm f4 followed by the current one and last the 'gold standard' 300mm f2.8.

To read these charts just concentrate on the solid red and blue lines. The red one indicates contrast and the blue indicates resolution (not exactly but a good way of rationalizing). On the x-axis, 0 is the centre of the lens and 20 the edge. If you are shooting on a crop frame like my D7100 you can take the edge at about 15 since this is an FX (full frame) lens.

The NEW 300mm f4

New Nikon 300mm f4

The 10lines/mm is used to indicate contrast is pretty well perfect across the lens and the 30lines/mm (resolution) is also close to perfection. The odd curve of the Meridional (dotted line) is due to the circular rings on the Fresnel but is not a problem as even the lowest point is better than as the current lens especially on a DX (crop frame) camera. ( The meridonial is made in a tangential direction so it would be in line with the Fresnel rings causing some interference where they align).

The Current 300mm f4

Current Nikon 300mm f4

The resolution (blue line) of the current lens starting at 0.9 is much worse than the new one (which starts at close to 1.0).

The 300mm f2.8 (at f2.8)

Nikon 300mm f2.8 for comparison

The resolution of the new 300mm f4 appears to be significantly better than this 300mm 2.8 which has a reputation as the sharpest lens in this range across all manufacturers. To be somewhat fair to the 300 f2.8 this MTF is at f2.8 whereas the others are at f4. Sharpness would improve if the lens was stopped to f4 but I don't have access to an MTF chart at f4.

Is this really possible or did Nikon make a mistake?

Although there is no information or reviews other than what Nikon put out, I have made up my mind to pre-order this as soon as it is available in Canada. I may be waiting for a while as Canada is usually one of the last regions to introduce new products. This lens is quite expensive but I have been saving for this eventuality for 2 years and although the resale value of my current lens just dropped significantly with this announcement, I still think that I can get a decent price for it to defray the additional cost. It list for $1996 in the US and the lower Canadian dollar won't help when the Canadian price is announced. For something this expensive I will not take the chance and buy from the US as Nikon Canada won't honour the warranty.

I will update this post once I get my hands on one. I would love to try this out by April capturing Warblers at Point Traverse Woods.


ADDENDUM    Jan 08    2015

I had a few days to absorb the information and specifications and did some more checking. I looked at the MTF charts for some other renowned lenses in particular the Nikon 200mm f2 which DxoMark has declared the world's sharpest lens.


Here is the MTF for the 200mm f2

Again this is at f2 vs f4 but at first glance it would appear that the new 300mm f4 could dethrone the 200mm f2 as the world's sharpest lens.

I'm sure that the few famous reviewers that have commented on this lens must have come to the same conclusion, but with reputations at stake, are probably waiting until they have access to samples and real images before they would make any radical pronouncement.

But I am not famous and have nothing to lose.

So here is my pronouncement. This lens is a game changer. When released it will amaze and more lenses with the same design concept will follow until within 10 years, all of the big monster telephotos will be museum pieces or used as doorstops.

Here's why.

The major cause of unsharpness in lenses is Chromatic Aberration. A property of optics is that different wavelengths of light through a convex lens, converge (or diverge in the case of concave lenses) by different amounts. This means that a white point or line input will be split separated into it's components and smeared into the colours of the rainbow. The only reason that quality lenses are so complicated is to compensate for this. Typically a 'group' consists of a convex and concave lens made up of glasses with different refractive indices, bonded together. The second element compensates for the Chromatic Aberration of the convergent (convex) lens by diverging and canceling somewhat. It is not possible to remove all of the Chromatic Aberration or the light will never converge.

A convergent Fresnel Lens also produces Chromatic Aberration but in the opposite direction to a conventional convergent convex lens. If these two are combined properly it is possible to eliminate Chromatic Aberration completely. With no splitting of light and smearing of the image, it is now possible to produce a lens with 'infinite' sharpness.

As in the original post, Canon was the first to commercialize this. The Canon lens was good but not much better than the conventional design - it was not well received. Last year Canon came out with a version II. The published MTF was much better and almost identical to the Nikon. Based on the experience with the first version, the Canon community appeared not that interested. I think that Canon will prove them wrong and that the Canon 400mm DO II will blow the critics away. It was promised for shipment in November 2014 and is has not been extensively reviewed as very few actually have one.

I did find a preliminary review of the Canon 400mm f4 DO done by Lensrentals on December 18 comparing the old and new, and based on their own testing using Imatest,  the centre sharpness went from 1190 to 1490 (a 25% improvement) which is quite impressive would be in line with the manufacture's published MTF improvement. While this is a different lens it validates that such resolution as indicated by the Nikon MTF is realistic.


I expect that the issues with this lens as well as the Canon will be production related delivery ones. These use totally new technologies for lens making, involving laser cutting of extreme precision. Nikon does have an advantage in this regard as they are the world leader in optics for semiconductor lithography which require manufacture of Fresnel Lenses of extreme precision.

Here is a Nikon link to one of the designers of this kind of optic. This was apparently initially used on Microscope eyepieces.

http://www.nikon.com/about/technology/researcher/newera/yoshida/index2.htm

Well I stuck my neck out, now I just have to wait to see if the axe will fall.


So I wait. The Nikon ships in February. It certainly looks like it will be worth the wait.