Nikon Z 17-28mm f/2.8 + 230mm dome port

I am wondering if the new Nikon Z 17-28mm f/2.8 would be a good wide angle lens behind a 230mm dome port. It seems to me the close focus capability of the lens would improve the corner sharpness at 17mm. 

I currently shoot with the Nikon Z 14-30 f/4 and have had difficulty with corner sharpness at 14mm. I added the S&S Internal Correction Lens which helped considerably but also discovered that zooming in to 18-20mm also helped corner sharpness.

Do you think the new Nikon Z 17-28mm f/2.8 would be a better lens for UW photography? 
 

Thanks - Larry

The close focus doesn't help with the corners if the center is focused on infinity. the problem comes down to focusing on both the centre and edge of the of the curved virtual image which are both very close to the lens.  Depth of field varies only with f- stop and magnification, so you can stop down or as you found you can zoom out which decreases magnification to pull the corners into focus.  I would expect that the new Nikon lens would perform similarly to your 14-30 f4 at the same focal lengths as far as corner sharpness goes.

The usual caveat applies in that not all lenses work well behind dome ports and you would have to await someone doing some testing on the lens to be sure.  But assuming all is well I struggle to see how it would be an improvement over your current 14-30 lens as it should perform about the same as the 14-30 does between 17 and 28mm again assuming corner sharpness is the only issue with the 14-30 lens.  If the new 17-28 has better corners on land than the 14-30 it may help you a little bit.

On 9/22/2022 at 5:36 AM, UWPics said:

I am wondering if the new Nikon Z 17-28mm f/2.8 would be a good wide angle lens behind a 230mm dome port. It seems to me the close focus capability of the lens would improve the corner sharpness at 17mm. 

I currently shoot with the Nikon Z 14-30 f/4 and have had difficulty with corner sharpness at 14mm. I added the S&S Internal Correction Lens which helped considerably but also discovered that zooming in to 18-20mm also helped corner sharpness.

Do you think the new Nikon Z 17-28mm f/2.8 would be a better lens for UW photography? 
 

Thanks - Larry

Hi Larry, First the new Nikon 17-28 F/2.8 like the Nikon 28-75 F/2.8 and the 70-180 F/2.8 on the recent roadmap all appear to be the Tamron lenses designed for Sony with the Nikon mount and Nikon outside sugar coating. If you look the optical design is the same as the Tamron's. If you go to the back issues of UWPMAG.com issue #119 has my review of the Tamron. It is a quite good lens especially with the S&S correction lens. Since the lens has a 67mm filter thread I used the S&S 72mm with a 67m to 72mm steppe ring. Not sure your 82mm S&S would work well at 67mm with a stepup ring. I used the 17-28 with 180 & 230mm domes with best results with 230mm. I used the 14-30mm with the 82mm S&S and got lousy results with anything in the 180 to 200mm range, you need 230mm. As noted above you can use the 14-30 at 17 so not sure you would see much upside to a second lens.

I have all three of the Tamron lenses for travel photos. They all take the same 67mm filters and cover an excellent range of coverage at about 2/3 the cost of the F/2.8 Sony lenses in the same range.  

8 hours ago, Phil Rudin said:

As noted above you can use the 14-30 at 17 so not sure you would see much upside to a second lens

Thanks Phil, I agree. I am going to stick with the 14-30mm + S&S Internal Correction Lens + 230mm dome. 

13 hours ago, UWPics said:

Thanks Phil, I agree. I am going to stick with the 14-30mm + S&S Internal Correction Lens + 230mm dome. 

Give us feedback :)!

On 9/26/2022 at 9:05 AM, stillviking said:

Give us feedback :)!

What sort of feedback are you looking for?  I just did 2 weeks in Roatan with a Z9 and a 14-30 with IRC behind a 230mm dome port.  This after years of shooting the 16-35vr.

I can say that the 14-30 is pretty sharp with the IRC, but the perspective distortion at 14mm makes you not want to have a diver in the corners.

13 hours ago, phxazcraig said:

the perspective distortion at 14mm makes you not want to have a diver in the corners

I had this same issue and found the corner distortion can be fixed with the distortion slider in LR. With the S&S Internal Correction Lens fixing the corner softness, and the LR distortion slider fixing the corner distortion, I get pretty decent corners at 14mm.

Here's an example of what I mean.  How long is that scuba tank up in the corner?   I have not applied distortion corrections on this.

Craig, is that distortion as a result of the lens being zoomed to 14mm, or is it the result of the built-in Lens Profile Correction that Nikon have incorporated in the Z lenses?

I'm finding that issue with another Z lens - the 24-200 - topside. This is also creates weird elongations at the edges of the image. I'm not sure how (or even if) it's possible to switch off that correction. If it is, it may well have interesting results for using the 14-30 underwater! I've tried various settings in Lightroom but havn't found a way yet to eliminate it.

Have you tried the same setting topside and see what result you get?

8 hours ago, phxazcraig said:

I have not applied distortion corrections on this.

I set the Distortion slider to -40 in your image and the corners look a little better. 

9 hours ago, TimG said:

Craig, is that distortion as a result of the lens being zoomed to 14mm, or is it the result of the built-in Lens Profile Correction that Nikon have incorporated in the Z lenses?

I'm pretty sure that is perspective distortion one would see at 14mm with any lens, even if that lens didn't have a lot of barrel distortion added on top.

As for built-in correction, I have no idea.  I've never tried using 'built-in correction' that I know of.  I download NEF files and process them in Lightroom.  I turn on Lens Corrections and leave those at defaults.

9 hours ago, TimG said:

I'm finding that issue with another Z lens - the 24-200 - topside. This is also creates weird elongations at the edges of the image. I'm not sure how (or even if) it's possible to switch off that correction. If it is, it may well have interesting results for using the 14-30 underwater! I've tried various settings in Lightroom but havn't found a way yet to eliminate it.

Have you tried the same setting topside and see what result you get?

Well, a correction would make it better, not worse.  (Hence the term 'correction'?)   Switching off a correction on a lens would almost certainly increase whatever barrel or pincushion distortion was already there, along with increased CD and vignetting.

Personally, I rarely like to go wider than 24mm above water, and even that without humans in the picture, preferably.   The perspective distortion at 24mm and wider really is unflattering for people.

Topside with the 14-30.   Hmm.  Trying to think when I've shot it at 14mm above water.  A wide lens like this is a specialized optic for me that doesn't normally get used unless I have a specific shot in mind.  Or I'm indoors in a cathedral.  (Which I have not been, yet, with the 14-30 as it is a very new lens to me.)

5 hours ago, UWPics said:

I set the Distortion slider to -40 in your image and the corners look a little better. 

Yes, a little.  Now the tank only looks 50% longer than the others!

3 hours ago, phxazcraig said:

I've never tried using 'built-in correction' that I know of. 

From what I understand of the Z lenses, you have no choice. It's always On. It's built into them so, in theory, the Lightroom Lens Profile makes no difference.

In fact if you turn it on, you will see that it just reports "Built-in". Even if you then select the Nikon option, what is produced is not the lens you are using. For example, an image I shot with the 24-200 lens reports its profile as "Built In". If you then select Nikon as the Make, it reports the lens is an AFS 105mm lens.  Z lenses are not listed as an option.

I'm sure there is a way of switching off the built-in profile. I just haven't sorted it out yet!

This has been the case for Micro Four Thirds for ages. There is no way to turn it off in Lightroom, but there are some RAW editors that can ignore those profiles (I think Raw Therapee might be one of them). Of course that will only work if Nikon works the same as MFT.

16 hours ago, phxazcraig said:

 

Well, a correction would make it better, not worse.  (Hence the term 'correction'?)   Switching off a correction on a lens would almost certainly increase whatever barrel or pincushion distortion was already there, along with increased CD and vignetting.

 

Actually not always and it depends on what you are trying to achieve.  If it is correcting barrel distortion that is not "free" as the software needs to re-sample the image which can lead to loss of resolution.  The fact that it it stretching the tank out shows it is filling in missing pixels by interpolation and you will get higher resolution - i.e. sharper corners by turning corrections off.  Or you might want to stop it stretching corner tanks.

The corrections are used to allow the vendor to sell you a lens that is cheaper to make as distortions are not fully corrected and the distortion is removed in software.  Whether you want to do this depends on the picture.  If there are straight lines you want to keep straight you might want to leave it on.  But UW it is often said there are no straight lines with the possible exception on wrecks and the distortion in the lens often makes little difference to the image.  

Apparently turning off the corrections in lightroom can be difficult for a lot of lenses which may not have profiles stored within LR.  I have seen posts that state you can use non LR software to make a DNG file and turn off the lens correction in the DNG file you make.  I'm not sure if Adobe's DNG maker can do this but other software seems to be able to do it.  Scroll down through this thread till you get to a post talking about DNG:  Anyway to stop Lightroom from applying built-in lens profile?: Nikon Z Mirrorless Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

On 9/25/2022 at 9:03 PM, Phil Rudin said:

Hi Larry, First the new Nikon 17-28 F/2.8 like the Nikon 28-75 F/2.8 and the 70-180 F/2.8 on the recent roadmap all appear to be the Tamron lenses designed for Sony with the Nikon mount and Nikon outside sugar coating. If you look the optical design is the same as the Tamron's. If you go to the back issues of UWPMAG.com issue #119 has my review of the Tamron. It is a quite good lens especially with the S&S correction lens. Since the lens has a 67mm filter thread I used the S&S 72mm with a 67m to 72mm steppe ring. Not sure your 82mm S&S would work well at 67mm with a stepup ring. I used the 17-28 with 180 & 230mm domes with best results with 230mm. I used the 14-30mm with the 82mm S&S and got lousy results with anything in the 180 to 200mm range, you need 230mm. As noted above you can use the 14-30 at 17 so not sure you would see much upside to a second lens.

I have all three of the Tamron lenses for travel photos. They all take the same 67mm filters and cover an excellent range of coverage at about 2/3 the cost of the F/2.8 Sony lenses in the same range.  

Hi Phil, Based on your experience with both 14-30mm and 17-28mm, what would be your recommendation for the best wide lens + 230mm port option? Today I am using a fisheye (8-15mm) with 230mm, but apparently for most of the dives, I am missing a wide lens...

BTW, how bad will be the result without an S&S filter?

20 minutes ago, alex.lemberg said:

Hi Phil, Based on your experience with both 14-30mm and 17-28mm, what would be your recommendation for the best wide lens + 230mm port option? Today I am using a fisheye (8-15mm) with 230mm, but apparently for most of the dives, I am missing a wide lens...

BTW, how bad will be the result without an S&S filter?

Just to clarify what you mean you say "apparently for most of the dives I am missing a wide lens".  Does this mean you feel you need more reach?   BTW the S&S lens is said to improve the corners by about one - two stops.  So corners are as good at f8 as shooting at f11-16 range. 

2 hours ago, alex.lemberg said:

Hi Phil, Based on your experience with both 14-30mm and 17-28mm, what would be your recommendation for the best wide lens + 230mm port option? Today I am using a fisheye (8-15mm) with 230mm, but apparently for most of the dives, I am missing a wide lens...

BTW, how bad will be the result without an S&S filter?

ThIs is easy for me, both are good for U/W work and since the 14-30 is a 17-28 my choice would be 14-30mm. Both excellent with the S&S but you can live without it until you judge your results. 

8 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

Just to clarify what you mean you say "apparently for most of the dives I am missing a wide lens".  Does this mean you feel you need more reach?   BTW the S&S lens is said to improve the corners by about one - two stops.  So corners are as good at f8 as shooting at f11-16 range. 

My experience makes me think the S&S IRC is better than 1-2 stops.  

That has not been my experience testing the lens. 1or 2at best for me.