Nikon 24-​70mm Lens Review

Nikon 24-​70mm

Where to Find the Nikon 24-​70mm Lens

Why Use the Nikon 24-​70mm Lens?

The Nikon 24-​70mm lens has all of the qual­i­ties you would expect from a pro­fes­sional grade lens. At f/2.8, it’s a fast lens. As with the Nikon 14 – 24 or 70 – 200, the qual­ity is out­stand­ing, both in the build qual­ity of the lens and the opti­cal qual­ity it produces. There are no vignetting prob­lems or issues with chro­matic aber­ra­tion, even wide-​open at f/2.8.

With an f/2.8 aperture,it’s very use­ful in low-​light, par­tic­u­larly when using the shorter focal lengths that are less sus­cep­ti­ble to handshake.

The Nikon 24-​70mm is my most ver­sa­tile lens. It cov­ers a very use­ful range from wide angle to por­trait length. This lens excels at envi­ron­men­tal por­traits, allow­ing me to cap­ture a per­son in their ele­ment, like the image below.

Dude on a Harley — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

A Story-​Telling Lens

One of the ques­tions I often get about this lens is why bother when the focal length isn’t that much dif­fer­ent than some of the less-​expensive kit lenses. What makes it worth the cost? There are a few things work­ing for this lens that you won’t find in less-​costly lenses. There is a coat­ing on the lens to pre­vent lens flare, which is nice. It opens the aper­ture to f/2.8. That’s major for a cou­ple of rea­sons. We already men­tioned how it helps in low light, but the other issue is how to use such a large aper­ture to tell your story. Here’s a small exam­ple below:

Good Enough — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

The human eye is drawn to some things more than the other. We look at bright spots before we look at dark spots. We also look at sharp items rather than out of focus items. By using aper­ture f/2.8 on this photo, I was able to bring out the sharp­ness in the model, but let the back­ground fall slightly out of focus. The larger your aper­ture, the shal­lower your depth of field. The Nikon 24 – 70 at f/2.8 has a larger aper­ture than the inex­pen­sive kit lenses.

Of course, there’s still more going on here. The qual­ity of that soft area that falls out­side the depth of field is impor­tant. It’s called “bokeh.” There’s good bokeh and bad bokeh. Good bokeh looks smooth and creamy, mak­ing the dis­tract­ing back­ground dis­ap­pear into a soft, pleas­ing color. The way you get good bokeh depends upon your aper­ture blades — how many you have and what shape they have. The Nikon 24-​70mm lens has nine rounded aper­ture blades, com­pared to some cheaper lenses with six blades fea­tur­ing harsh angles instead of a rounded fin­ish. These lit­tle details may have a dra­matic impact on the qual­ity of your image.

A Walk-​Around Lens

Do you go on photo walks or do street pho­tog­ra­phy? You don’t want to be bur­dened down car­ry­ing a bag of gear when you’re on the go, so you want a ver­sa­tile lens. This is the one I gen­er­ally choose if I don’t have any expec­ta­tions of what I’m going to shoot. It has enough range to go from wide-​angle to mid-​telephoto.

I often visit Walt Dis­ney World and there are plenty of photo oppor­tu­ni­ties — some tra­di­tional and some unex­pected. For instance, I can use the Nikon 24 – 70 to shoot a wide angle scene like this one:

Tomor­row­land — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Using the same lens, I could pop around the cor­ner and find an unex­pected por­trait oppor­tu­nity. I was stand­ing in the back row of a crowd when I spot­ted Cap­tain Jack Spar­row, but I still had a long enough focal length to get a nice can­did shot.

Cap­tain Jack Spar­row — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

A Full Frame Lens

The Nikon 24-​70mm lens works great on my Nikon D700 — a full frame (FX) cam­era. That’s an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion. A lens that works on a full frame cam­era will also work just fine on a crop-​sensor (DX) cam­era. How­ever, lenses designed for crop-​sensor cam­eras aren’t suit­able for using the full sen­sor of a cam­era like my D700. This lens is an invest­ment that will work on a wide range of Nikon cam­eras, includ­ing the new Mir­ror­less models.

It also has a 77mm front ele­ment, which means it’s com­pat­i­ble with a wide range of filters.

What if I have a Canon Camera?

Then you’re in luck! You can use this adapter to mount a Nikon lens to your Canon body, allow­ing you to shoot with the Nikon 14-​24mm lens.

Novoflex Lens Mount Adapter — Nikon Lens to Canon EOS Body

Sam­ple Nikon 24 – 70 Images

Capi­tol Reflec­tion — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

The Apoth­e­o­sis — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

Lincoln’s Tem­ple — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

Pink Taco — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Frankies Tiki Room — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Amanda — © Copy­right 2010 by William Beem

Niki — © Copy­right 2010 by William Beem

Broth­ers — © Copy­right 2010 by William Beem

Gar­den Sun­set — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

Com­pany 71 — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

Spec­tres in the Fog — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

I’m Going Off the Rails on a Crazy Train — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

Zion — Mount Carmel High­way — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

Dra­matic Angels — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem