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The Nikon Z6iii Has A Dynamic Range Problem

Introduction

As you will know if you read my articles; I use very strict shot discipline in my pictures and because of this, I am a huge proponent of base ISO dynamic range shooting. It is obvious that Nikon do not consider the new Z6iii to be a landscape camera, it has - low resolution by modern standards, and a significant drop off in maximum dynamic range compared to the Z6ii. Despite this, I see many proclaiming that it is “amazing” for this task, so let’s look at the evidence as to why it is not the best tool to task for this genre.

A Significant Erosion of Dynamic Range

Because the Z6iii incorporates a partially stacked sensor (the first of it’s kind I believe), early testing shows that the camera pays a price for it’s faster readout speed over the Z6ii. Photography website Petapixel have stated they reached out to Nikon about Bill Claff’s sensor test results on the camera and they of course gave the usual “newer is better” rhetoric. If their response is the be believed (I’ve no known reason to question why Petapixel would make this up) it is a response straight out of the management damage control handbook. If you have a brain inside your skull and are willing to test the Z6iii against the older Z6ii, you will see that this is a complete lie on Nikon’s part. There are many tests now online that back up Bill’s sensor data, the camera is far nosier in the shadows when you have to balance exposures in post. (Not that we needed this, Bill has clearly a track record of delivering in this regard and only a fool would be questioning his results at this stage in the game).

Let's examine the facts from photonstophotos.net. Maximum dynamic range compared to the flagship Z 8 is a difference of approaching one stop - 0.82 EV. (And it is about same difference between the Z6ii and Z6iii). That's significant if dynamic range is a priority when someone was / is already shooting with the Z6ii. Which, I might add, if you are a landscape shooter, it damn well should be. Otherwise, why not just use a tiny sensor camera or a phone, right? Why lug a huge full frame camera about to have dynamic range that micro 4/3 can obtain? There are plenty of DX cameras that have this dynamic range or better! We cannot always bracket in all circumstances and having access to the best dynamic range and RAW file malleability always helps when processing. Looking at the data again, we can see that the Z7ii is even slightly better, making the distance between those two reach over one stop. Therefore, the difference between the Z6iii and ii is obvious and someone pushing their exposures, (trying to eek out all the data from a single RAW) will notice it. I would certainly call it significant because the human eye / brain can interpret around 20 stops of light, so any erosion of near a stop is a real backwards step when currently, the best in class in 35mm format is the d850 at about 11.62 EV, hence the following is what we see (Tip: If you have trouble seeing these graphs on mobile, just pinch zoom into them):

Nikon Z6ii vs Z6iii dynamic range — The Z6ii vs Z6iii photographic dynamic range

Z6iii maximum -10.46
Z6ii maximum 11.28
Z 8 maximum - 11.32
Z7ii maximum - 11.60

I must say that it is frustrating to see an important image quality marker degrade for speed in ML land (this isn’t any problem on dslrs as they don’t require fast read outs). We are taking one step forward and two backwards with some mirrorless cameras in order to achieve fast readout speeds. It is clear that this engineering problem has not been solved. However, I think that it is obvious and Nikon are well aware and not expecting landscape shooters to buy this particular camera. However, as usual youtubers’ that are landscape photographers (and the rest) have the camera and are reviewing it.

Of course, this lot are all part of the marketing machine, with their affiliate links, ready to tell you, step right up; buy, buy, buy! You must have this, I bought mine from here and you can too! I emplore you to ignore anyone that receives product from a company to review pre-release, or an ambassador of any product on a companies’ pay roll! Think about this for a second. They have a vested interest to obfuscate. If they are too critical, fat chance they'll receive anything else in future which would mean it will affect their youtube channel. I almost laughed writing this; however it is the reality of the situation. I watched several youtube videos for research before I wrote this piece and it was the usual hyperbolic nonsense -“I didn’t think the Z6iii would be good for landscape photography; but it is amazing honestly” (paraphrasing). Not a mention of dynamic range or the like. Yes as you can probably guess, I found most of these videos painful and cringy to watch. None of the many videos I watched touched on dynamic range with this body…perhaps they know to keep their mouths shut if they know what’s good for them? Some big photography websites came out and clearly stated the dynamic range issue this camera has, then walked it back recently saying it didn’t matter, really! Some even commented on how “amazing” the Z6iii is for wildlife shooting? Did they forget it is full frame (which isn’t always what wildlife shooters want), has a substantial backward step in dynamic range and is, relatively speaking low resolution for wildlife standards? Every camera I see being reviewed or previewed - whatever they want to call it, is ‘amazing’, ‘fantastic’ or ‘must have’. So what does that make the previous? It’s amazing how judgement and integrity goes out the window when money is involved, isn’t it? But glittering prizes and endless compromises; shatter the illusion of integrity…

Dynamic range is one of the wider reasons I'd love to see a mirrorless landscape camera optimized for something like ISO 16-400 with an as slow as you like readout speed, that doesn’t care a hoot about high ISO. Sensor tech has hit a wall for a long time now though and from where I stand, people are completely obsessed with high ISO. Most photography forums have endless, boring debates about high ISO and noise reduction. Many shooters are mistaken that aperture doesn’t matter now because of high ISO abilities in modern cameras are as they proclaim “so good now”. I mostly never go above ISO 500 for any camera* because I understand the ISO invariance for each one I own, and if I am in true low light situations, I always use fast aperture lenses. Photonstophotos.net is an excellent resource for discovering how you can best use your camera for maximum image quality.

*There are some caveats to this when shooting deep sky style astrophotography images. Read more about this in my shooting guide here.

D850 Class leading dynamic range — Compared to the D850

Let’s look at the class leading D850 compared to the Z6ii and iii. The Z6ii was doing very well to approach the D850 so closely at it’s base. The rest of the chart is hair splitting at best. It is pertinent to note; that the Z 8, which I do own has a slightly inferior dynamic range to the D850. This is slight (around 1/3 of a stop difference) yet still I’d prefer not to move in this direction if possible. I think in time, we won’t see this trend. What caught my eye with the Z 8 were the multitude of upgrades I had been looking for years for and my general dislike of the Z7 and Z7ii cameras stopped me from adopting any Nikon mirrorless - read more about this here. If the dynamic range erosion was almost a stop, I really would not have bought the camera. It doesn’t enamor me moving backwards, rather than forwards. The most important item is the end result, so extra bells and whistles will always factor lower in the equation for me than the resulting end image file; which has no regard or care for if it were obtained with a dslr or a mirrorless camera.

RAW File Malleability

For Landscape Photography, the below picture is a good example of why singular RAW file dynamic range matters. This was shot in 2012 with a Nikon D800. A six minute exposure capturing the beautiful low lying cloud streak across a November skyline at this iconic location. The light was gone after the six minutes. Bracket you say? I’d like to see you try, and personally I’d rather not have to when I don’t need to. Rather, I relied on the huge D800 dynamic range and double processed this file in RAW development to capture the range of light in the sky right down to the shadows. The less dynamic range a camera has, generally speaking the much less malleable it will be. We don’t want this for this genre, or indeed really any genre that values the sort of principals I am speaking about here. This is why when you hear someone waffling on about the Z6iii being a good camera for this genre, I believe you should take their advice with a huge grain of salt:

Scotland’s West Coast at Gourock with the Nikon D800 - Singular RAW file development

I read all the time about newbie photographers who seem to think that they don’t need to pull files much to get results. I would like to see their images! Because the linear RAW file data presents itself in a way that does not look lifelike to me. Shadows need pulling and highlights need taming, then there are the midtones to think about in order to even begin to approach what my eye is seeing; this is despite whatever picture control is being used in camera / post-processing. Regardless of whether a shooter wants realism embedded in the final result or not; it can only be considered a pro, not a con to have this option of better RAW file malleability. (The D850 remains to this day the best camera on 35mm format I have ever used for this, the Z 8 is a close second).

So what is the Z6iii for? People who wish better autofocus and better video performance over the ii at the sacrifice of dynamic range. It is clear that Nikon felt they had to push the rather slow readout rate upwards from the Z6ii camera which has lacklustre autofocus capabilities, and problems with rolling shutter in video. These are issues that did not face DSLRs for still imaging - I would rather shoot with a D800, D810, D850 or D750 over this camera and it’s compromise. I’d honestly rather pick out a old dslr that can be had for peanuts, mint and second hand without this compromise to it's function whilst we seem to remain in this transition between mirrorless cameras without compromises such as we see in the Z6ii. Or just hang on to your Z6ii until they are done piecemealing the tech to us. All companies do this, and only the shmucks are in there every generation updating their kit for stuff like this; it’s even worse this time that it is a backwards step. There are so many competent options now that compromises like this do not impress me one iota. Some websites are stating the old ‘oh people are not comparing apples to apples’ when talking about maximum dynamic range. Well, I am afraid we are. They are all cameras, and the maximum dynamic range metric at base ISO is an important one. It is irrelevant whether that camera only achieves base at 100, or ISO 64. We want to know what the absolute maximum attainable dynamic range is, and we can compare that across cameras. Forget about the settings. Just the maximum achievable dynamic range. It has also been stated that the difference is only half a stop between. This is completely wrong. As I have shown, between the Z6ii and the Z6iii it is an erosion of approximately 0.82 EV.

Of course someone could “make the Z6iii” work for them, and get around this in certain situations. If they ever have to rely on a singular shot and push it, like I have shown, the results will be less than ideal and you will have nasty amount of noise (no, don’t think AI noise reduction is the way to go - it simply isn’t). Why select tools that are clearly just a product of piece-mealing that include a backwards step in technology to move something else forward? I dislike this approach. Before you rush out to buy; getting caught up in the hype I am seeing on so many internet forums, consider that the camera you already own could indeed be besting it. This won’t shift any stock on amazon, or boost any youtubers’ view counts though…

Leave the Noise in your Photographs! (Techniques For Low Light Shooting)

Glowstick Girl. Absolutely pushing the limits of the D810 sesnor and fast aperture prime lens, the 50mm f/1.4G nikkor in ultra low light. ISO 12800, 1/40, f/1.4.

Introduction

Noise in images seems to create a huge panic amongst photographers these days, and I honestly do not know why this is. For a long time I have mostly preferred very low levels of noise reduction, or none at all in images I produce. I dislike the plasticy look that even advanced AI noise reduction programs achieve if pushed too far; and most of the time it just does not look natural to my eyes. I have some exceptions to this rule, for example in deep sky astrophotography work where I use it a little bit more due to the overall process involved; it almost feels more necessary, as it is normal practice to photograph extremely faint deep sky objects and stack many hours of images together to make the final image.

What I seem to see in forums and in discussions, is that this by product of producing a still image is so ugly that it must be removed, and in many cases, totally removed in that we get smudged, lifeless backgrounds of noiseless strata. I think that there are plenty of camera’s out there that produce a very organic, dare I say it, film like grain that doesn’t distract from the image, and at time’s that itself might even enhance it’s “realness” depending on the situation. We should remember most noise is hidden unless coasting 100% views of the image which no one does except us. The forerunning image in this article mostly captures my thoughts on noise. Leave it in. I’ll normally use it at a setting between 15-25, depending on the picture. This forerunning picture was set to 20, a reasonable setting for this extreme condition. Many would go much further with noise reduction. We would push it further, then the face becomes very plasticy looking, as do the PJ’s. We could take that even further, and mask out the face / body and just hit the background with NR; but then we get a real disconnect between the background and the subject. If I occasionally do this, I do it very gently so it is not picked up (like all good edits should be). This picture is a very extreme example. Most pictures do not require this level of touch up to obtain a great result. The advice I am going to impart in this article will keep your noise to an absolute maximum, allowing you to make great pictures even in ultra low light conditions with a little bit of know-how and practice.

Noise Reduction for low light photography — Nikon D810, ISO 400 at f/1.4 and 1/125

Close up showing Noise (Pinch zoom if on mobile)

In this first example, I have used no noise reduction; because it simply isn’t warranted. Better to have details than smudges. Using good shot discipline, as I have done here, allows me to avoid any noise reduction in this case. You can see why I love shooting with the Nikon D810, despite still owning the newer mirrorless cameras. It’s sensor produces a very film like grain at moderate to high ISOs (400-6400 ish). There is no way I’d want to rid this from the image. Be aware, it is difficult to show the exact grain without doing a 100% crop - this isn’t one because it ends up being too small.

Settings

You will notice that in for example, Lightroom, (ie camera RAW in Photoshop) that there are some settings in the noise reduction panel to be aware of. There are sliders for the amount of total global noise reduction, and specific slides for luma noise, and colour noise with sliders to aid their application. For luma noise, I tend to use zero for most work, especially daylight landscapes. Even portraiture, I use very little or any, even if we are speaking about higher ISO portraiture in low light (of course with some directional light too hopefully).

I tend to ensure that colour noise is between 5-35 (this varies image to image); too high a level smudges any singular colour backgrounds together and leaves artefacts which are quite ugly in nature (that plasticy look again). They are very easy to spot in defocused backgrounds with fast lenses. Too low a setting and individual RGB pixels are seen which can really take away from the background of the image. Test this out for yourself and you will see what I mean. You’ll get better results than just leaving it at the default of 25 all the time.

Pinball Kid

In this example my son is playing his pinball machine and was too warm - deciding to go topless. An unusual, but humorous picture nonetheless, I always have a camera about in the house. This image was processed in Lightroom to reveal the massive dynamic range, and pull out the scene so it looks like what my eyes saw. When first assessing the RAW file, I could see very little into the shadows. The reason the file looks like this as it is presented in a linear looking form and has no curve or contrast adjustments applied to it yet. It was very simple to adjust the curve and shadows to bring out the D810’s beautiful dynamic range. Care must be taken to not just pull sliders about without reason, adding +100 to shadows will really bring out noise in situations like these and will worsen the image globally, reducing contrast and at times giving a horrible muddy, HDR look to the resulting picture. We don’t want that. What we want to do is produce a picture like what our eyes saw. Here are the majority of the settings applied to this RAW file, a relatively simple edit in this case:

The reason I have had to boost by +1.6 on exposure; is because I shot at the dual gain point of the D810’s sensor to maximise it’s dynamic range. The rest of the settings are self explainatory. Notice the slight upward curve point applied at the right of the leftmost hump. This increases midtone contrast and brightness. I have faded off the end of the blacks slightly to soften the image in the deepest tones, indicated by the applied leftmost point. I did a very basic singular mask on his face and highlights of his body and that was it.

Noise Reduction Settings

For this file, I left the settings at my default of 25 for colour NR. any lower, and bright R G B specs could be see in the darkest areas (like the vignette in the corners and the low lying exposure zones). Too high a setting, 35-55 for example, and the green background smudges into a horrible plastic one toned blob, we don’t want that, it’s not a good look. Yes I could clean further with the AI addition in LR, or elsewhere, but I left it in this time (it looks bad here bceause it is super magnified). You can see I haven’t applied any luminance here bccause in this particular example, doing so dropped the detail in the scene to levels I did not like. AI NR used sparingly, can work however as I will show later on in this article.

100% Crop

Lightroom Edit Screen — 100% crop. NB focal plane on eyes outwith shot

This is the natural noise “grain” from the sensor, and I like to keep it real. If you have ever printed an image, you would know that noise just doesn’t really show up much. My advice to most shooters is to drop the time wasted on noise reduction and focus on something more worthwhile with the above simple caveats, and consider that yes, for deep sky astro work, things are a little different. Remember, that your mileage may vary. Whilst I feel that cleaning up too much of a file and making it too perfect destroys the realism, especially there are several factors that influence that - for example removing a rock in a landscape etc, you may not. Where does it stop? For every shooter, there will be a different place where they consider the edit has gone too far. As long as you are happy with your result and progess as an editor, you are on the right track.

NB - Please be aware that it is difficult to show you exactly what these files look like here. Image compression applied by the website tech can product some artefacting and blockiness can appear in deep blacks, not present in the end result on my monitor.

Extreme low light shooting — Extreme Low Light with the D810

Let’s look at an image that I made in November 2024 of my son in the back of the car on his tablet computer playing games. I shot this at too low of an ISO - 400. Despite the D810 being pretty invariant, I should have shot it up at 3200-6400 to get less amp glow and magenta cast on the right which I fixed in post. To my eye, this was much darker. All I could see was a tiny glow on his face, and the light from the tablet. The surroundings of the scene - the car door, and the window above with the glint of a car’s tail lights was barely made out by my vision, showing how incredible these cameras actually are for a fast shutter speed shot. This above image is the result of AI noise reduction in Lightroom. I used a setting of ‘25’ for it. This shot was boosted 4 stops in post! I can do this because as mentioned, the D810 is mostly invariant when doing so, however even if I shot at ISO 3200 etc, there is so little light that there would be very similar amounts of noise. This is when I will use moderate amounts of AI noise reduction, or sometimes a combination of Lightroom’s manual NR, and then AI NR.

Adobe AI Denoise

This is my preferred method of NR, being a Lightroom / Photoshop editor. It keeps this process in the family, and only takes a few seconds to do, and it also means I don’t have to waste money on other dedicated programs. However, for a while I kept getting blue / purple colour casts when using this powerful technique. I found out after some digging that it was nothing to do with graphics cards or out of date drivers in my case. I found out, that it needs to be applied first, or at the very least, before any masking is applied. You see, Denoise AI looks at the pure RAW data, and disregards any edits you have made to the raw file. It then calculates the setting you input, and then places those further edits you made, back over the file after it completes. If you have used complex masks and the like, it seems to be that the calculations get messed up and we sometimes experience strangeness such as the colour casts I was seeing. Since experimenting, I no longer have this problem. Sometimes it is useful to create a virtual copy of the file in lightroom. Do your edits on the initial RAW file, and see how much NR you will need. To the virtual copy undo all edits, then apply the NR, and simply sync the edits from the original RAW file over to it after it completes. This way, I never get casts and I will admit to it being a very powerful technique, when used with care.

Final Thought

Do not be like everyone else in this game who obsesses over noise in photographs. It’s the worst trait of photographers today. (Apart from those dudes that show up at dark sky sites when I have been there all night, lighting stuff up with torches!). Consider how much NR you need and apply it tastefully. I highly recommend Adobe Denoise AI in lowered amounts. Think about the scene. Let’s make it feel like film, and less like digital. For the most part, it’ll turn out whole lot better than the plasticy look I see everywhere now…

Lens Design and Selecting Tool to Task Lenses

Introduction

How do we select a lens for a subject? This depends on many factors. Sometimes, one of those factors may take more of a priority over another. Say, for example, I am a landscape photographer. However, what if I am a landscape photographer on an extreme budget? Well, I might suggest looking for the most bang for buck camera and lens combo one could probably buy. A older Nikon DSLR such as a D800 in great condition, with perhaps a reasonably priced mid ranged zoom, or maybe an older mirrorless body with an accompanying lens suited to their shooting style. If money is no object, or say, less of a concern, the game changes a bit. They might be splashing out on a Nikon Z 8, or a Sony a7R V etc and the very latest zoom or prime kit. The same is the case when we select a lens for shooting. The priority is balanced with budget and intention, how the image will be used and displayed etc. This said, even despite the D800 being quite old now, it has phenomenal dynamic range and image quality. (In capable hands, I still consider it world class. It is only budget now, because it is older).

However, getting back to lenses, what if we really think about why some lenses are better suited to certain shooting applications? If we put initial cost of owning a lens aside, how do we then select a lens after that? Should we shoot landscapes with a lens tuned for portraiture? What about the other way around? Should we try shooting the night sky with lenses that were never intended for that purpose? What happens if we do these things? Why can’t lenses be perfect for every subject?

Balance

A lens designer is an architect of optics that must balance science with art. This isn’t dissimilar to a photographer. We hopefully balance technical craftmanship with art, to hopefully produce an image that produces an idea, a feeling, a journey, an expression of emotion. Someone I speak to often about lens design - someone who knows way more about this than me, once told me that lens design is a balancing act; a veritable horse trading of parts - a give and take in a very real sense. The designer can trade and optimise one thing, which will perhaps be to the detriment of another optical property. And this is why, truly great lenses often fall into different categories, of course by design. This is exactly why, we should at least consider which lenses we are using to shoot which subjects. Would another lens work better? Many of us do this by looking at reviews - I will myself admit I do enjoy doing this. Despite doing so however, for many years I have begun to question the efficacy of tests for a lens clearly designed to be shot (or is optimised overall) for infinity shooting, being tested with a close up scene in a studio or a garden? What would that really tell me about a lens that was clearly optimised for something else entirely?

We have never lived in more sophisticated age than we do presently for lens design, and it has only gotten better. Lens design is dramatically improved vs decades ago by computer aided design, and relatively speaking, manufacturers’ are able to provide us with excellent lenses compared to thirty years ago for reasonable prices. 35mm format photography now approaches medium format in quality when optimal lenses and technique are melded together. The designer has access to tools they simply did not have in those times past.

Aberrations

All optical equipment has to contend with the properties of light, with regards to how it refracts through lens elements. An aberration simply refers to the deviation of a light ray through a lens causing blurred images, or areas of an image which are blurred / degraded in quality. There are many types of aberrations which can hamper final image quality that the designer must contend with and balance. The big ones are, vignetting, distortion, field curvature, chromatic aberration, comatic aberration, spherical aberration and astigmatism. Many types of aberration improve when stopping a lens down through it’s aperture range, however some do not - which dismantles the old cliché that all lenses are the same by f/8: this is simply not true.

Vignetting - This is a peripheral shading (darkening) of the side frames and corners of the image. This tends to affect faster lenses more and always improves when stopping down, due to the aperture blades of the lens obstructing the outer light path as the lens is stopped down.
Distortion - An obvious optical problem is when the lens distorts things like vertical or horizontal lines or objects. Lens distortion is different from perspective distortion (the distortion we see when using an ultra wide lens on a person close up). Distortion can either be barrel or pincushion, or sometimes a mixture of both.
Field Curvature - This occurs when light rays do not attenuate to the same focal plane, we are left with potential dead spots were the lens isn’t sharp (or it is less sharp). Field curvature can come in different types, wavy etc.
Chromatic Aberration - There are two types. ‘Longitudinal CA’ occurs when different wavelengths of colour do not converge at the same point after passing through a lens, also known as bokeh fringing. The second type, called ‘lateral CA’ occurs when different wavelengths of colour coming at an angle focus at different positions along the same focal plane.
Comatic Aberration - Also known as ‘coma’ is an aberration that occurs when light rays from the edges of the image pass through glass elements over the changing shape of the lens elements, they vary in magnification and become stretched out. This aberration only affects off axis light. In astro work, stars on the periphery / corners of the frame can literally look like little comets.
Spherical Aberration - This occurs when light rays focus on different planes after passing through a spherical surface. Rays that pass off axis refract more than rays passing horizontally through the centre of the lens and thus cause this. The rays that pass through the elements off axis refract so much they can focus in front of the intended focal plane. This can cause a blur / glow in images at fast apertures. Sometimes this is desirable in small quantities and is balanced with other aberrations to optimise a lens for a specific task.
Astigmatism - Known as the ugliest optical aberration. Astigmatism occurs when the lens elements fail to focus image lines running in different directions in the same plane. This one doesn’t really go away as we stop down the aperture of a lens (I have previously spoken about how not all lenses are the same at f/8, and this is one of the reasons). As we stop down, the increasing depth of field can mask a lens with some astigmatism in it, but often not fully account for the problem. Astigmatism causes softness to the edge frames in many lenses, in astrophotography it produces winged seagull shaped stars at the edges.

Lenses for Landscape Photography

Loch Garry Scotland Nikon Z8 — Loch Garry - Nikon Z 8 with 24-70/2.8S

Generally speaking, most landscape photographers want lenses that portray a very detailed and realistic interpretation of the scene. Landscape photographers need an accurate representation, and where possible, a lens which imparts nothing onto the image other than the scene in front of it. This includes fine detail, such as in grasses and rocks at near and far distances. Generally speaking, a good landscape - tuned lens is optimized to provide as much low, mid and high frequency MTF structure as possible. Controlled aberrations, sharpness balance across the frame (rather than just centrally), control of coma, astigmatism, flare and other optical phenomena are important to shooters in this genre. Lenses for landscape photography use tend to be f/2.8-4 lenses at their maximum apertures. The are usually designed to work best at mid range apertures such as 5.6-f/11 where they will be used most of the time. Lenses for this genre benefit from being sealed from dust / moisture to protect from inclement weather conditions. One thing I would highlight here is, there is a great deal of confusion from our community regarding lens speed. People will often balk at the suggestion of using a fast aperture lens for this genre of photography, because it is likely, mostly, going to be used stopped down in the field. It is understandable why they think like this, however it is a fallacy - we must consider that some aberrations do not go away as we stop down. Sometimes the faster glass just works better overall, even stopped down.

Lenses for Portrait Photography

Nikon 85mm f/1.4D baby Portrait — Boy and his Balloon - Nikon D800 with 85/1.4D prime

Lenses for this genre have completely different aims. The best ones are obviously designed and built to make people look good. Out of focus areas have much more priority in the design, things like spherical aberrations and coma are adjusted in different ways than in landscape lenses to balance the background out of focus elements, with the sharpness of the subject and the focal plane transition areas. Lenses for this genre tend to have faster maximum apertures in order to be able to produce large areas of defocus (bokeh) in front and behind of the subject. These lenses tend to be optimised for use at their widest, or wider first few apertures, whilst still being able to balance scene fine detail when stopped down at close range.

Lenses for Astro Photography

Astrophotography 14-24/2.8S Nikkor Isle of Skye — Orion over the Quiraing, Isle of Skye - Nikon Z 8 with 14-24/2.8S

This genre is by far the most testing for any optical equipment. Point light sources, which are essentially what all starlight is to us, is a torture test to even the best of lenses. The three big ones in astro photography that we want to see controlled; are astigmatism (winged stars on the corners of the frame), coma (comet shaped stars out with the central axis) and chromatic aberrations (purple / green halos around areas of high contrast). If the designer can balance this with a good level of sharpness, especially across the frame from wider apertures, and a reasonably fast aperture to boot, the lens should excel on starlight.

Dual Personality Lenses

24mm f/1.4G nikkor arcade portrait — At the Arcade - Nikon D810 with 24/1.4G, a true dual personality lens

There is a very real situation whereby a lens can be a master in two disciplines. Let us consider, a fast aperture prime lens, for example the 50mm f/1.2S Nikkor. Clearly built as a portrait lens, and designed to work on people, it produces beautiful rendering at it’s first few apertures and at close ranges. However, use it at infinity, stopped down and it technically speaking is an excellent landscape lens also. There are many examples of such lenses. An older design that this applies to, is my 24/1.4G nikkor. Wide open and stopped down to the first few apertures, this lens is a bokeh, focus transitional rendering piece of magic. However, use it on a landscape at f/5.6-f/11 and it is extremely capable. I find this quite curious, and I have often bought lenses with this personality in mind. I used the 24/1.4G for many years as both an environmental portrait and landscape lens. What I like most about a lens like this is it’s ability to give a cinematic look in pictures such as the one I have shared above, and also be very proficient and showing vast amounts of detail and contrast when used stopped down on landscapes. It is perfectly capable in both disciplines. Needless to say, I like owning lenses that can do this, and as much as I like using zoom lenses for landscape photography, I love using primes. on people / objects. I keep the zooms for landscapes now.

NB - I shot most of my landscape work with prime lenses up until very recently.